I put off writing anything about graduation and my ultimate end to higher education – mostly because I didn’t know what to say. I spent the last two weeks settling in at home. I went to all my medical appointments (physician, dentist, orthodontist, dermatologist, podiatrist, whew!) in a span of three days.
Good news, by the way – all the parts checked out fine, and I’m going to have a long and successful life. Well, the doctors verified the “long” part. I tried to slip in the “successful” part into their diagnosis. It didn’t take.
I’m finishing up choosing my own health and dental insurance, fixed my 2006 taxes and now I’m repeating the process for my 2007 (don’t ask.) I’m also close to finishing the other 37 miscellaneous errands that come with the territory of figuring out your life. This includes finding a place to sleep – for me, that place is my living room. On the bright side, I’ve finally secured some desk space, so I have some semblance of an office, and more importantly, a place to work.
I broke down the steps I’ll need to take, and questions I’ll need to answer, to succeed as a freelance writer, and I was daunted. I’ll go more in depth at a later time, but it feels like I got hit by the bus. And instead of passengers inside, the bus was filled with to-do lists written on yellow Post-It notes:
What’s my TMI (target monthly income?) What are my expenses? How long will I give myself to reach my break even point?
What’s the best way to start generating cash flow? Should I focus on my own niches? Dial for dollars with the local businesses? Should I stick with jobs I pick up online?
How much time should I invest in marketing? Should I make a real website before writing posts on this blog? What can I name my “official” website? Or should I scrape marketing, and focus on creating actual samples people can see?
What if I take this computer, throw it out the window, and give myself bonus points if I hit the Jehovah Witnesses making their weekly rounds?
To make matters worse, I couldn’t find any solace in its normal residency (1 Bottom of a Bottle Avenue) because:
1. Depressive drunk-out-of-his-mind Minger doesn’t set a good example for the kiddies.
2. Can’t afford the liquor.
Instead, I wound up randomly cruising the web – and found a post on a Tricking blog that made me feel exponentially better about this whole situation. An excerpt is below:
“Now I’m thinking about tricking and how the same thing is bound to happen if we continue working hard enough. One day, after all that practice, that day will arrive. And it will be a glorious one. It’ll hit us like a wet trout in the face. We’ll wonder what happened, and think of it as an amazing session, a good day. But from then onwards, things will never be the same again. We will have moved up a notch. We will start to stand out from all others. All the pieces of the puzzle we have been learning for years will start to come together and connect.
That day is coming for all those that train regularly… its unavoidable and incredible. It will happen… it can’t fail to. The good people know what I’m talking about, and the average people might think they are there, and the beginners will just dream of the day.
One thing is for sure, when everything connects, you know about it. And you ‘will’ know about it. It’ll be the best day you’ve ever had and it will continue.
That is what all the practice is for. For that day.”
The application is different, but clearly the parallels are there. On a day to day basis, there’s only so much you can do. Everyday, you need to put everything you got into those little steps, making incremental improvements. You figure out your tasks, the targets you need to hit to reach your goal, and you work on scoring bull’s eyes, day in, day out. Until one day, everything “clicks.”
Like he said, we’re all just working “for that day.”
Posted by Ming 
