Frankly, this pisses me off.
Mainly because it’s just not true and also because it’s mean. Yes, we all have the same number of hours in our day, but according to everything I’ve read about Queen Bey, her parents worked their butts off to ensure their daughters didn’t have to think about anything other than their careers. This isn’t taking anything away from those girls or their family. They deserve every success!
But, for us to compare and say we should be putting out albums or doing whatever they are doing just isn’t fair on us! Beyonce didn’t have a part-time job to help cover the cost of schooling. She never had to scrimp and save to afford new tights for ballet. And as an adult, Beyonce never had to schlep to the supermarket with a screaming toddler. She never had to schlep anywhere she didn’t want to go!
I’m sick of mean memes like these, making us feel inadequate. Shame and guilt never encouraged lasting change in anyone, and telling ourselves that we should be able to do what another artist/human is doing is just not great for anyone! Especially when we’re just trying to put food on the table or find affordable childcare.
I’m still reading the Art of War by Steven Pressfield. I’m really enjoying it, but it’s raising a few hackles, to be honest. On page 55/6 he tells us that there’s no excuse for not doing the work because “Tolstoy had thirteen kids and wrote War and Peace. Lance Armstrong had cancer and won the Tour de France three years and counting.”
For starters, this kind of shame/blame game just doesn’t help as I said above, but it’s also not even vaguely accurate. Tolstoy was a MAN, obviously, and part of the landed aristocracy. The number of children he had would have had almost no bearing on how he spent his days. And as for Lance Armstrong, we all know the truth about how he ‘won’ the Tour so many times. (I’m reading the 2002 edition, so I am sure Mr. Pressfield has revisited this little nugget of information in subsequent editions!)
We all need encouragement. Sometimes gentle and sometimes a boot in the backside but if guilt-trips made us more successful, we’d all be driving around in Lamborghinis! What we need are reminders of how great things can be when we set goals and follow through on the daily actions required to achieve those goals.
I read a brilliant blog this morning about quitting Or more to the point, not quitting!!
I was so grateful when I stumbled across an article on Medium that prompted me to blog daily for 90 days. It gave me the encouragement to keep going, and through this process, I have found my niche! No guilt or shame, but I needed focus, and a quest came at exactly the right time.
Speaking of QUESTS, I am going to go back and finish reading The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau. I abandoned it as I just couldn’t think of a quest that appealed to me, now I have my first quest…There’s no stopping me now!
Quote for the day
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