Musings on committing and continually showing up to a place, a profession, or a person in an age of endless opportunities + persevering - even and especially when it's hard.
the fear of commitment is really a failure of agency, of taking full responsibility for our choices and their consequences. A kind of learned helplessness dressed up as freedom. I think that’s why commitment feels so heavy to some people. You’re accepting full authorship of something, and you can't blame circumstances or timing or compatibility for... See more
Wendell Berry wrote: there are two muses — the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought."
Commitments become easier when you realize that, after enough wandering, the grass is unlikely to be greener, pursuing novelty has diminishing returns, and continuous optimizing comes at the cost of compounding—and nearly everything great compounds
I meet a lot of people searching for something (career, relationship, etc). And yet, when it’s put in front of them, they won’t pursue it because they fear pain (getting hurt, failure, etc.). So they unconsciously (and expensively) trade self protection for misery.
I think obsessiveness is necessary for deep thinking. You have to stay with a vague sense for long enough that more and more of your mind is recruited for figuring it out. And then it's sort of like fishing: a waiting game. You need patience and persistence to catch the big one