Success is hard

Controlling thoughts is hard.   I wish it wasn’t.  I’m at lunch right now, and if I had my druthers, I’d druther play Fallout New Vegas and spend some time exploring the Sierra Madre Casino in Dead Money.  But I’m not.  Because success is hard.  But it’s worth it.

I guess this is the point where I say you need to spend time working on the things that will get you ahead, to the detriment of your entertainment life.  I’m not saying your family life or your religious life.  Definitely to the detriment of your entertainment life.  Working long term on something is really the goal in all of this, with long term results coming from sweat equity and labor.  Learning to do a lot of things that no one else can do and no one else says is possible.  Because ideas are easy. 

I’ve had a dozen ideas on things that could be worthwhile.  Probably more than a dozen.  But I’ve never put the sweat equity into building those ideas into anything worthwhile or usable.  Or sellable.  But what isn’t easy is slogging through the work after the shiny idea phase is over.  And as such, success is hard.  Because success requires putting in effort that you don’t have the time for to work on something that won’t pay off for quite a while.  Does it help me immediately to go back through the algebra videos on Khan Academy?   No.  Will it pay off some time in the future?  I hope so.  

Why?  Because I have an interest in robotics and building things.  I also have an interest in learning algorithms and getting computers to be more than passive devices.  But in order to understand how to make that work, you have to understand the math.  The math is generally high level calculus.  I passed Calculus 2, but that took three attempts more than a decade ago.  I haven’t looked at major math in a long time.  If I want to understand how to make and produce using mathematical equations, then I have to understand the equations.  I can’t see a summation sign and lose my brain.

So, that’s why I’m writing this instead of playing Fallout New Vegas.  Because keeping some sort of documentation on how things are going is the only way to keep going, and to see progress.  That, and maybe I’ll inspire someone else to be successful.