039. The Time Of Suck.
“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”
The Beginning
That giddy feeling when you are finally going to scratch that itch. To jump out of that plane, pick up a paintbrush or try to tune a guitar for the first time. Everything about the action is exciting, its new. It’s what you’ve always wanted. In your mind you jump ahead in time until you are a master.
You can see the long road of progress laid out before you and fast forward to the day when you are in full flow, when you are expert. There are no mistakes, how can there be? It’s the beginning you have no culpability. It is your first day. There are no wrong answers, no bad choices and no stupid questions.
The end
What was once difficult is now easy. The time spent in getting there all lead to this point. But you know now that mastery is an illusion, there is no getting there. There will always be something more to understand, something more to learn. Somebody who can do it better. Ironically you look back and realise that you need to go back to the basics, to the fundamental things from the beginning and reassess them with the eye of experience.
Everyone has experienced at least one of these states in their lives. For me I always seem to land smack in the middle of these two in the as yet unmentioned third state.What I like to call THE TIME OF SUCK.
The Time Of Suck
This is the time when you are too far along to be a beginner and too far away from being an expert. This is the time of the intermediate. This is the time of repetitions, this is the time of frustration, this is the time of impatience. For me this is also the time of unrealistic expectations.
This however is the most important phase of any endeavour. The time of suck is when the groundwork is laid when the miles are travelled and when the focus is being slowly pulled until the image is becoming clear.
From my experience being guitar teacher this is the time when most people quit. The initial euphoria of being new fades and the minutia of what is actually involved derails us. This is not what I signed up for. I thought I was going to hack that, I would plug into the matrix and be able to declare instantly “I know Kung Fu.” This is the time when my expectation of how I think something will be does not align with the reality of how it actually is.
For me I am always in this phase with something in my life. I need to constantly remind myself of the importance of this time. This is the time that will build it, this is the time that will break plateaus and this is the time that will yield the most results. It is also the time where you need the most resolve, patience and tenacity.
What is you time of suck?? Let me know in the comments below.
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