Most of us who are good at anything, really good at anything are good because we want to be better. But this isn’t enough, we are truly good because we have practiced for upwards of ten thousand hours and this is why we can survive enough in what we are doing to get past the barriers of doubting ourselves every single day. We’ll still have doubt of course, it’s important to be humble, and the best people are. But we have to get past this initial rain of doubt, flooding our consciousness by continuing to do it enough times, the thing we are terrible at. I’ve heard this advice before, but I seem to constantly be forgetting it, when I have my lazy moments, when things are so hard and I forget that sometimes they’re supposed to be this way, as my lover reminds me. A life that is too easy isn’t worthwhile; it doesn’t have any substance to it. Beauty is born from struggle. Life and beauty are not always the products of struggle, but they often are. When we get to the finish lines and we connect with something worthwhile perhaps, something we have built ourselves without any help from anyone else, or without some cheerleader in the background screaming at us, “Yes! you can do this!” because we have to be our own worst critics and our own cheerleaders somehow. We need it, in order to work harder. We have to maintain a balance of both, because otherwise it becomes all too easy to give into despair. To give into that pessimistic mindset of “Is it really all worth it?” and instead pushing through somehow into, yes, yes it is, if we make it worth it. If we do things for our own reasons, because we want better for ourselves. We want deeper, we want more, we want to cut past the barriers, all the bullshit, all the words. Words can be ugly and beautiful, but they can often get in the way of what we really need to achieve. This isn’t easy. None of it is. But as we miscommunicate, and as we struggle, we grow. We become more, greater than the sum of our parts.