The big-house-long-driveway theory
A different take on mod
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There aren’t many things in life that are simple and easy.
Usually, they are simple but difficult, or they are complicated but easy. You don’t usually get a double-whammy. In fact, it’s never happened to me. I live my life in a constant flux between the two.
My work on the internet is simple but difficult. I know what I need to do each day, but some days it’s rather difficult to muster up the energy (in my time slot before the working day commences) to put something of use on the internet— sometimes I’m unable to achieve that goal.
My daily work in the corporate world is usually the flip opposite. Complex things that are easy. And by that I mean, a lot of time is taken up with red tape, politics, and usually ongoings of the corporate world that, as hard as it might be to escape, is a feature of a big organisation.
I have come to believe that you can’t demand unreasonable things of yourself. I can exist in those two pots, just about. Anything more is too much. I write, I work, and I garden. That is my life, and that’s the extent of my energy.
Maximizing every day
My mornings all look the same. Wake up, get a coffee, stare out the window at the garden, walk upstairs, open my laptop, write. It’s been like this for 5 years, in some form or another.
James Dyson famously worked on Dyson for 15 years, walking to the garden shed (pretty much) to build a cyclonic vacuum that he would later turn into Dyson, which today, sits him at a net worth of $15 billion. On Wednesday of last week, I learned about that fact, I must have thought about it every day since.
Most people exist in these ideas of grandeur. I know I did. That what they are doing now is at complete odds with what they should be doing. They ‘slave’ away at the corporate world, day in day out, that they are doing something catastrophically wrong — that life shouldn’t feel like this, but they don’t know how to escape.
It’s why reading something like ‘quit your day job’ feels so liberating — you sit and think, convinced, this is the answer, the great escape. The energy is palpable, you sit and type out your notice in a mix of anger and joy. This is it, this is the end.
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The reality
The reality, though, is that life often doesn’t happen in big swings. You get nothing for free. Not really. It happens in little moments, shifting the tide. Slowly, slowly. And the true power is knowing that and existing in the discomfort of that. That everything isn’t perfect, that your career isn’t exactly how you want it to be, because — will it ever be? Perhaps not.
It’s not defeatist or unambitious. It’s just the reality. Every big house has a long driveway. And by that, I mean, every great thing comes with a set of unique problems in itself.
One day, I was driving past a big house on the way to one of my favourite dog walks. I said aloud, “Look at that house, that’s a ‘dream house’”, and then, I saw a little buggy cart bouncing down the driveway, carrying 2 dustbins. It was quite at odds with the idea of this ‘dream house’. That once a week, somebody was dragging smelly dustbins onto a buggy to drive them down the track road to the end of it, so the bin collectors could grab their bins. It wasn’t a burden I had experienced, with my rather short driveway.
And for that, actually, I was quite happy with my little home.
That’s all for today.
Much love,
Eve
Founder - Part-Time Creator Club