Monday, paint.
Tuesday, paint.
Wednesday, paint.
Every single day, effort.
Discipline.

Thursday, paint.
Friday, paint.
2 weeks, paint.
3 months, paint.
1 year, paint.

And at some point along in there, it becomes incredibly fun to paint.

You don’t feel like painting when you start, but after so long the process becomes 1000% worth it.

One day… you just PAINT. But you aren’t painting… it’s as if the voices have taken over. It’s as if all the initial effort was to push boulders up the hill and it’s time to roll them down. It feels as if the creativity jumps out of you, like light rays from the sun. It’s effortless. It’s inertia. You aren’t painting, you’re becoming.

I know because I feel it during writing. I don’t always love starting to write. I don’t even love every time I’m writing. But once the process has started, it’s a freight train that can’t be stopped. It amplifies. After writing for several days/weeks in a row… it just pours out. But consistency has been the only thing I’ve found to enable this.

The thoughts all just weave together. The ideas begin to mesh. All these background ideas, examples, and information seem to slot perfectly into one interwoven puzzle. The understanding arises as the words flow out. It’s like the neurons assemble themselves into a nicely organized geometric pattern.

That’s the beauty of flow state.

I first really noticed it practicing guitar over COVID. It was the exact same feeling, I just became aware of it. It sucked to start playing guitar… but once I was in it, once I was up and out of bed, strumming… I loved it.

For whatever reason, that initial friction point feels the hardest part. It’s what makes New Years Resolutions so tempting to give up. Skip a day. Then two.

Point is, I don’t thing we get out of this life without effort… not a life we actually want at least. It takes work and effort regardless, we might as well just invest it before life makes us, right?

There’s a cool phrase a close friend once told me “Choose your suffering”. If we don’t choose it ourselves, life chooses for us. Suffering will happen. It’s up to us which type to choose.

Free dopamine seems to be one of the more dangerous substances at our disposal. It’s doom scroll. It’s instant access to porn. It’s nicotine.

Hardly any of it kills us on impact, like cyanide, it’s just death by 1000 papercuts.

Because free dopamine comes with a price – it just not paid until later. We pay for the dopamine with an elevated baseline. We pay with it by feeling worse. not backed by science

After hours of the good ole’ doom scroll, I feel like dog shit, lethargic and bored. And still unsatiated… so I go back to the scroll. Any effort to deviate feels astronomical.

I guess that’s why they say to ‘eat the frog’, right? The cold showers, the morning run, and early wake up – it’s the hard stuff first so the normal stuff feels easy. Thanks brains.

I don’t think we get to live this life enjoyably and sustainably without large amounts of raw effort.

It all takes effort – It’s just up to us where we put it.

Would we rather face the consequences of our inaction, or suffer up front and reap the benefits of our actions?
It’s all effort (and sometimes that’s quite upsetting)

“The greats weren’t great because as birth they could paint, the greats were great because they paint a lot”
Macklemore