2024-12-29
tags: none
Words: 571 (2 minutes to read)
(This is entry 57 of #100DaysToOffload)
Within life, there are certain aspects where you really want to excel, and certain places where you just want to do enough. I've found for my work studies (for the Cert CII), I just really care to do enough study to make sure I pass. It doesn't really matter whether I pass with 100% or barely scrape a 70% pass mark; just as long as it's a pass.
With the RHS, I'm finding that I really only care to make sure I have enough knowledge to pass. Of course, I want to do well by it, but fundamentally I just care that I get good enough. I've got a month of study for it - and I will try - but what happens happens, and I can't say I'd be too distraught if I just got a pass, not a distinction.
In terms of the guitar, and the mandolin, I'm not being graded. Yet, with these, perhaps precisely because there is no actual number being attached to my progress, I want to do as well by it as I possibly can. I want to get good at it; often I don't manage, and I beat myself up, but at the very least, I really do want to be good at it.
I think there are just certain things where you have to say, looks, I've got a fair bit on my plate, and I'm willing to let this one part slide just a little. I don't think that's bad. Accepting that not everything will be perfect is a part of life; things get in the way, priorities change, motivation comes and goes.
It's maybe just about taking it day by day, and never little something slide too far. There is a point where it gets disappointing, or you resign yourself a little. I haven't played guitar for three months now, oh I'm so useless, I'd might as well give up. Yet, of course, in terms of tracking things by days, I could just as easily say, Well, I just play guitar today, and then I'm back on track, if we're going by days elapsed. The thousands page has somewhat fallen by the wayside for me, but this follows that principle, which is why I consider it a good idea. Yet, I've forgotten it completely. I'm tracking things in a different way now, that makes it somewhat obsolete, even.
Life is too much flux and too much flow. To achieve true excellence in one pursuit, I've have to sacrifice others; life is fundamentally a game of sacrifices. A certain amount of it is adjusting oneself to the reality that one person can't do, or be, everything. I can't be incredible at guitar and mandolin and an expert horticulturist and an insurance guru and a polyglot and a man of letters and dedicated to my fitness and... whatever else. I have to make concessions, and do as best as I can with the time that I've got.
It's a not-so-fun game of choosing what you're happy to be bad at. Then, it is a still not-so-fun game of taking those things you've chosen you want to be good at, and getting good at them. It'll take years.
(I have played mandolin for a mere eleven days, as of today. It's a disappointingly small number, and I'm still terrible at it as a result. I started to see results at the gym by my thirtieth visit; maybe by thirty practices of mandolin, I'll realise I'm getting a tiny, tiny tiny bit better.)