April Littrell
Motivation
Something special happens when you want to do, but don’t want to do the dos before what would be done. There’s a deep sense inside you saying what will and won’t happen according to priority. And what will happen must and what must happen requires a cucumber-keen motivation.
I’ll intersperse my usual self-conscious disclaimer that I am no oracle and am simply writing whatever this will turn out to be as a keepsake for myself and to those kind souls who’ve peeked over shoulder via my newsletter. It’s a two-way communiqué that you’re welcome to riff on.
A healthy individual is fond of a few of their own traits and dare I say I pride myself in my motivation. It hurts in a primal way to see the certain successes of others play out across the net, but that show makes it far too easy to think of your own flounders and forget the good stuff. I’ve had a pleasant amount of luck lately in my endeavors. Counting blessings keeps some humble humility handy so when that luck gets fucked I won’t be all too blindsided. A sacred font of ambition spouts from somewhere starboard of my digestive tract and it’s that trickle of motivation that’s enough to keep my boat afloat through imminent hardships.
I’ll share a spritz of that fountain with you.
Habits needn’t happen habitually
So many matters of motivation involve nursing habits to maturation. You should keep X, Y, and Z twice, thrice, and every other hour per week to keep a mate-attracting shape. You should write now and then and then and then for a puffed-up portfolio and read Rudyard in between. You should roll out of bed, hit the head, and steadfast to work for fortune. Finance family in a fractal pattern of unconditional appreciation. Condition a scalp sporadically, according to container label.
These habits happen not through Pavlovian pinging nor performance-enhancing app pushing. And they needn’t. Real repetitiveness reaches your brain stem through those sly sources you’d rather not acknowledge.
Alas, whatcha want to happen will with will.
I recently moved on from a pigeonhole position at a pretty unique company. As of this writing I am writhing in job apps and wringing the net for leads. It’s tedium at its finest, filing apps that should appeal to those you revere with a zeal that drops after each tap to submit. But I iterate, and turn the pesky process into a game that’s proven quite fun over the endless, blurry days.
What’s important is I haven’t made a habit of applying. No chore, no task, just me and a keyboard and cask, sending out and sipping down with frolic.
Life’s no joke
It’s a grand game, some Shakespearean twist turned on to new tech taking us from stage to system, library to level one.
My brother Kevin. I miss him some thousands of miles away. Both of my brothers, really. But this piece pertains to Kevin. Back at my parents’ house he’d careen into my room flinging bits and bouts of think things at the one AM’s and on. I’d be about to brush and hit hay and he’d say something silly or wise with no way to know which way it’d go. At a point in time he laid on the concept of centeredness.
You’re the main character. First-person perspective. Everyone else is an NPC.
Kevin’s a bold boy. He just does shit. To hell with it. He up and goes. Sociable devil. And this helps to explain.
An NPC is a game term for a Non-payable Character. The concept is that in life, you control you and everyone else goes about their business. Is it selfish?
Moons ago. High school. A fling with a Karen who stared at cars. She saw the metal boxes whir by linearly like light. And she wondered about the people inside and where they were going and how far that continuum of cars would spread once they’d gotten there. Similar concept.
I studied comparative religion. Reminiscing about some K’s of present and past has me swirling in religious philosophy. It circles back to motivation. And to circles.
Circles
Motivation is about circles. And dammit if I don’t provide a practical phrase here. Been spewing abstractities. Too much word Pollock. This piece is admittedly structureless, but from a draft and therefore requiring a return to prior thought. Therefore a challenge. Therefore a true think.
When I want to do but don’t want to do the necessary before-dos I brush off the dos of before. The dreary application process as example. Here I am, hashing out emails to companies that look damn nice. And I won’t settle for bull because as much as there’s bull to be done there are people in pretty chairs doing the good work. And I take a why-not-me attitude to it all. It’s not a perfect method and ends in a lot of exacting strike-outs and face-slaps and you-think-you’re-betters. Then it happens and is alright. Because it happened before. Woe was before and so was contentedness. Samsara.
Like that fountain I spoke of earlier, motivation sprays out liquid that lays down into itself at a big circular well surrounding and gets sump-pumped back out. If you’re not suspending reality to understand this metaphor you may ask what charges the pump because fountains need electricity. The answer is bananas with peanut butter.