I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.

Almost surely, that’s how life seems to function for most of us. Things take time, that’s all there is to it. It’s a concept that is kind of lost on us, however, considering the innate tendencies of most of us to want things to be quicker than they would be; patience is tough. If you doubt me, well, there’s billions who believe that the universe is a few thousand years old despite there being no evidence for such claims; fathoming the excruciatingly slow pace of progress in the world is not a pleasant experience. Not for most of us, at the very least.

Things take time. Life takes time. There’s just no way around it. Or extremely lucky odds, and even then it takes time. Life is lazy, full of inertia, and just simply way too full of itself to respect what we want. Life is like the ex you had which gave absolutely zero fucks about the fact that you had to go to dinner the day you did because there was a game week coming after and work travels and you wouldn’t get time for a date for months after and then you break up because you didn’t go on a date and then it doesn’t make sense and you’re like fuck it and all the drama and… yes, I’m fine, why do you ask?

In a way, it also takes humility… and that’s a bit of a tough ask as well. Life has absolutely zero reasons to respect our impatience and it doesn’t cater to our whims, as strange as that may seem to some of us. Seeing how it has taken so long for people to understand concepts like consent gives me absolutely no faith in the ability of people to have that humility.

If I seem a bit incoherent and rambling at times, that’s what you get when someone does not sleep all night.

Finally coming to the point I was trying to make, notice the power of little habits, of little actions, and of patience. Small steps, a cut here, a break here, and you carve an intricate valley out of a mountain in a century. The example is important because it directly correlates with how thoughts carve out their own neural pathways in our minds. A moment of “I can’t do this” will make every subsequent moment of doubt just a tad bit easier than it was and before you know it, you’ll have forgotten what it means to feel belief in your skill; the converse effect is believing you can do no wrong. cough “Alpha” Tates males cough

TL;DR: Don’t keep bashing yourself for being yourself, cut down on the doubt, but don’t be so full of yourself that you become…

Gamers and creatives would actually be able to understand this so much better. You don’t get to a masterpiece or a Level 80 warlord overnight. It takes tons of strokes, of the brush or the blade, and a lot of time. Just don’t stop. Every small step is a step towards a huge after-effect. Life loves compounding.