Getting Started is Tough

Keeping going is even tougher

Getting started is tough.

Keeping going is even tougher.

Looking at that clock the night before and convincing yourself you’re going to wake up at 530, it feels like the shortest five, six, seven hours you’re sentencing yourself to.

I took all of these images from google, one of my lazier posts — how’s that for irony?

And it’s hard. Getting up in the morning for something you don’t really need to do—it’s gotta be one of the hardest things you can do.

No one’s expecting me to be up then, I’m not getting paid for it, no one’s gonna look at me different, and no one’s gonna reward me.

Now, why would a man cut into his glorious eight hours of rest from the chaos of the world—in order to get up earlier to do something he doesn’t have to do.

You know, that’s crazy, that’s gotta be the definition of crazy.

Doing things you don’t gotta do for no reason other than you kind of need to in order to not go insane. I mean, really, that is the case here.

But here’s where I start to disagree. You’ve got to do it.

You’ve got to do it because no one is expecting you to do it. You’ve got to do it even though you might be leaving the arms and the warm side of your lover to sit in a cold chair and be alone for several hours.

You’ve got to do it even though it might mean running in cold weather, through the rain, in the dark, lifting weights—whatever it is you’re doing, it doesn’t really matter. These things are all the same in the end. These are all different sorts of sacrifices.

You’ve got to do it even though your workday was hard, and you found no solace in the human interactions you had with others. You’ve got to do it even though you don’t want to. You’ve got to do it even though you risk being more tired, less present, and less able to make it through to the end of the day. You’ve got to do it because of all of these things.

Because each time you manage to do it, you feel as though you deserve to smile more, you deserve to treat yourself at the end of the day, you deserve to revel in the fact that you did something you didn’t need to do, something that aligned with the very core of who you are—even though there was a great part of you that didn’t even want to do it.

Now, what I’m talking about isn’t that you should force yourself to get up and exercise when you don’t have a core value of fitness in your life. If fitness doesn’t matter to you, then you obviously shouldn’t dedicate your mornings to it. But, if it does, if you have goals that you know you won’t be able to slot into your normal daily life—such as you want to be able to run a marathon, then you’re going to have to cut into something that you do want.

You’re going to have to cut into sleep, socialization, relaxation—it doesn’t really matter what it is, but you’re going to have to take something out in order to fit it in.

Now that thing could be something you’re already looking to quit. Maybe it’s time you spend browsing Tik Tok or maybe it’s time you spend entertaining yourself—you’re going to have to cut into something somewhere to fit in that thing you value but ‘don’t have time for’. For me, it’s sleep. I know I don’t need eight hours of sleep to properly function. I’m good on six or seven.

This is all to say that those things which you might deem unnecessary to your being—should be necessary.

Recently I read this comment from Jason Brain: I like to think you can tell most about someone by what they're doing at 5 AM (their "logos" or animus) and what they're doing at 5 PM (their "telos" or reward). What is the logic of their rising, and what is their day for the sake of? The collectivists do not get up before dawn to do their own stuff – they might be driven in the way that a beast is whipped, but they are not drawn ahead "by the god" as Plato describes such internal inspiration and moral guidance "over and above us".

If only it were so easy that if we had a deep enough pulling to something—that it did not require discipline, training, and constant effort towards those things which we deem are our purposes. It doesn’t work that way, though. If you want to build something you want to see in your life, to experience, to accomplish, to achieve, to live—you’re going to have to cut into those sweet comforts.

But the crazy thing is—the very act of cutting into them—is what makes them truly enjoyable. Up at 530 today, but when you hit the bed, you can smile easier, play more, and rest comfortably knowing you did what mattered to you, even though no one noticed.

Thanks for reading