8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Tag: finding motivation

Chapter List

  • Significance Gap

    I am as bad as anyone when it comes to looking for meaning in what I do.

    I spend my days working towards significance.

    Oh sure, I write for the sake of writing, make art without care for anyone ever seeing it, and play music with my headphones on so that no one ever hears the sounds but me—but nearly all of it is in service to some future significance, I wager.

    We practice to improve.

    We groom our skills towards a purpose.

    We reach out for significance—which is something that cannot reliably be measured.

    What is significance? What is purpose? What is meaning?

    In a way it might be something parallel to the idea of wealth. Wealth is the acquisition of money in search of a tipping point from insufficient to more than enough. Wealth is relative. It’s a marketing term for banks. It’s an ineffable concept. For some wealth might simply be financial stability. For others wealth is riches beyond imagination. Wealth comes in a variety as diverse as there are people on Earth.

    Purpose is similar, I think. Meaning and significance are intangible and indefinable, and likely they mean something different for everyone who utters the syllables. There is a gap in communicating what my definition of significance is to you and vice versa. For some it might mean something personal or linked to a small community, while for others nothing short of worldwide fame and history shifting effort would suffice.

    My only advice then: define it for yourself.

  • Excuse You

    Look around, pay attention and you’ll start to notice it everywhere.

    I happened to notice it the other night while we were having a family night catching up on a couple reality shows. I made a note that I should write something about it.

    Victimhood.

    You don’t fall into that trap, do you? You don’t trip over the wires of opting to blame everyone else for failure. You don’t catch on the snare of looking for external factors every time something goes wrong.

    We were watching that show—you know the one—where pairs of contestants race around the world and do challenges.  One of the teams was lagging, severely, and it was never about them. They played the perpetual victim. Other teams were picking on them. The challenges were so hard. The world was against them. Oh, I’m sure it felt good to dump their successive losses at the feet of everything and everyone else, but wow: it’s a game, it’s supposed to be competitive and challenging and stacked against you at every turn.

    Maybe, sure, it was played up by the editors of the show, but I also recognize that as a personality type. I also know that there are a lot of people with big ideas and ambitious dreams who hit a few little obstacles—and oh, will there be obstacles on the path to creative endeavours—and out come the excuses and blaming everything and everyone else.

    The list is endless, but you’d recognize it the second you heard it: someone or something is preventing those people from the win, so they give up trying.

    But the game is always stacked. The world is always working against most of us. That’s just the universe.