Persist to Prevail · 6:15am Oct 16th, 2019
Interm Memo
Forgive me. I wrote this blog some time ago but never hit the sacred 'publish' button. Written for friends who... appear not quite to be friends. That, and the writing for this was subpar. Got taken away by a feeling for goodness. Sometimes it makes for good writing. Other times it blinds you too much to see the words.
And the words matter most of all.
Be well.
How ironic the writing of this blog is, at least to the person behind the words you are now reading, when the theme and thesis of this piece target him the most. There's been a saying on my lips for the last little while—a word, one alone, that I've uttered more now than ever before in my life.
And what is this word? Let's face it. I'm a talkative bastard. Give me a mic and some spotlight and I'll keep talking until both run out of energy. I say more than what I need to. The flow of prose is something I like to keep along with—even to the point of being verbose.
So why is it then, as of late, what motivates me the most is not some speech, or a bullshit tangent relying on the skill of my tongue or the quickness of my wit... is but a mere word? Maybe because of how simple, quick, and effective that very word is.
Take a seat class. You know your numbers already. Today's session is focused on a single word.
Yes! You in the back. The one with the raised hand. What is that word we will be speaking about today? Open up your textbooks and flip to a blank page on your notebooks. All of this will be on the test.
Ready to begin?
Today's class is about the word persist.
Mediation is one of the hardest acts a human can do. It requires one to shut up, sit down, and try not to think. Easy for the decent person at the five-minute mark. Ten minutes—and you're starting to earn respect from yourself.
Too bad you have to mediate for fifteenth minutes a day to feel the true bliss of calm and, over the course of a month, to notice all the subtle changes to your thoughts, feelings, mindsets and behaviours.
It should surprise the classroom, if only a little, that this talkative cunt mediates.
Mediation is hard. When the mind calms down from the present, regrets and worries rise like fog from the past—anxiety strikes, with definite certainty, the bleakness of the upcoming, hollow future. Things you had not considered, too busy for your mind to give time and space for, arsing at once.
But that shit isn't too hard. You learn not to ignore it, but rather, acknowledge and accept such things. Half the deal of mediation is to work out all the shit lurking beneath the surface. But harder than that are the moments in-between. When you're fighting, really, to be silent and still.
It's easy to break then. If you open your eyes, lose your breath and your way, nothing will blame you. There will always be a next time. A glance at your phone will kill none. You don't have to get it perfect now. Fifteen minutes is a long time, so why are you—
Silence.
It's easy to break at such times. Especially when, after all that hell, eight minutes are still clicking down on the clock. No amount of self-help books or fancy quotes or anything like that will keep a weak will through hard times. But of course, it's through hard times that makes a weak will then strong.
But only if that will learns how to endure.
This is an action that leads to the kind of person you want to be. The thoughts course through my mind, slipping through the counting of my breaths. They are allowed, of course, for the truth of them is my salvation to continue through this torture. Be real. Enduring this makes you real. Don't just be a collection of words.
My focus returns to my breathing, and though I'm just as quick to give up, a final word silences my mind for good.
Persist.
When that word came into my mind, at once, it told me everything I needed to do. The call, the needed action, what had to be done for greater success. Something about it unlocked something within me. Like I wasn't doing something wrong as the conflict in my body told me, but rather, I on the path to beat something greater for myself.
I don't think we're naturally programmed to persist. At least, there are times and calls and words that urge us to do so, which reminds us of the purpose of persistence. But we're apt to forget. We don't hop back to it as much as we have to.
But even last night, when I was struggling to hit 12K words to catch up in my work, I lacked behind the word processes. Things were hard, the flow wasn't easy, that period of tension and doubt killed me, where I had to extract every word from my suffering mind.
I was close to calling it a quits.
But instead of that, I shook my head, closed my eyes, and a heavy breath escaped me. Persist. This is when it matters the most. The moment the word was made for. Don't be like the rest when they hit this spot. Persist. And just like that, I hammered through that tough spot.
Sure enough, I hit a strand in the writing that allowed me to soar across the page with my words. Where I had started off limping, I finished sprinting. Crossing the finishing line taught me what was wrong with the start. I went back, removed and improved, and shipped off the story to my client.
When had all of this started? The direct start is unknown, but for a fact, I can tell you all when the seed was planted. Way back in 2017 when Idubz made that diss track on Ricegum. We'll avoid the backstory on that because it doesn't matter.
What does matter, however, is this verse.
“You can't persist for shit, you narcissistic prick.”
This line swung a metallic baseball against my cheek, a home run hit for fucking sure, when I first heard this shit drop. It was around this time that I had made too many promises in my life, ones I wanted to keep or fulfill, but either due to lack of skill or overestimation, I couldn't follow through on.
And the line hit me dawg. Even though it wasn't a song made about me, the behaviours it mocked lined up with my bullshit for sure. Can't follow through with shit. A narcissistic prick. Why was all this the case? Because I couldn't persist for shit.
Everything I disliked about myself came from an inability to persist through the shit. Those hard moments when you start, those patches you hit while you work—leaving, crying, groaning and bemoaning my place in life. Fuck. That. Shit.
It's only recently that I've tried my best at life again. To keep at it, really doing and becoming, and it's been a hard route indeed. And though I keep reading non-stop. Writing 5-10K. Drawing like shit—but still drawing. Going to the gym despite being a twig. These are all things I'm proud of, even though most of them are weak and small things now, simply because they all lead where I want to go.
And when I think about how I got started, how I keep with them, only one word comes to mind. I've heard friends and co-workers be that talk. Wasting their word, devaluing its worth, not out of spite of others, but rather because of an inability to persist. Through this fear to be like them, someone who has lost their word, I decide to persist and to remind myself of the word whenever I forget its action.
Here is the final note to take, class.
Whenever you find yourself trying something new, and things are getting hard, when you have arrived in that tight and tough spot, you may ask for help, to leave and take a break—so long as you do not quit. But those hard progressions are things only you can do, a challenge of your character, your will. One word can help you through that, which will ease the tension and throw you back into the trance of working.
Maaaan! This one came out as a little bit edgy, didn't it? Sorry if it came out like I was commanding a class or being over the top in trying to be witty. That's just me fucking around with the context of the narrative. Parts of my usual voice slipped in at bits. I like that.
The way how I speak and how I write is so drastically different that it sometimes feels like I'm two different people residing in the same body. In the future, I hope for these blogs to still come out with the high sounding prose I enjoy, but at the same time, enjoy the chill, jokey, usual voice I employ in my day today.
As it is said before, if you would like to chill with the boys and I, you can do so in my Discord server here. And if you enjoy my blogs and would like to support me as a writer, please consider tipping my Ko-Fi or pledging to my Patron.
Keep well, boys.
And don't forget to persist.
~ Yr. Pal, B
I hope those cute pictures don't distract people from what you actually said.
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I usually include the pictures to make up for what I said.
But, as always, thank you for reading my blogs, broski.
~ Yr. Pal, B
That was good. I need to think on this because gears are turning.