About Live With Yourself/Let Yourself Live

Post 216:

            The bigger the goal, generally, the more steps it takes to achieve. As a corollary, this involves more opportunities to go the wrong way.

            This is a tough one. We all want to optimize our performance, deep down, but first we have to decide what that means. I struggle with it. There’s part of me that knows I should just pick a very narrow genre or style and stick to it, because I want as many readers as possible.

            Then again, I want to be good and well-rounded. These two ideas can’t exist in the same market…can they?

            I call this the “live with yourself/let yourself live” conundrum. We all have ideals (hopefully) and though we know we’re not perfect, we try like hell to do what we can. On the other hand, you can’t totally sell out. There are shortcuts and paths that feel bad all the way down to your soul; no amount of money or worldly success is worth that mental wreckage.

            Like I said, this is a tough one. And personal. There’s no graph or chart for feelings vs. pragmatism, as much as I wish there was. I’d have feeling good on the x axis and pragmatism on the y, and there’d be some point of optimization on the graph.

            But there’s no graph. Just what you want and what you need and the all-important ethos clash that must have it out in your heart and mind.

            You gotta live, and you gotta live with yourself. That’s the whole deal, really. I’m not saying it’s a riddle that can ever truly be solved, but it’s worth thinking about from time to time. You don’t want to end up on the asshole graph.

            Cheers. See you after.