I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BORN NOCTURNAL TRULY I SHOULD HAVE. THE NIGHT IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND FRESH AND DARK AND MYSTERIOUS AND AT TIMES SCARY AND WILD BUT AT TIMES SO SERENE AND STAR LIT THAT IT MAKES YOUR HEART ACHE THAT YOU CAN'T JUST JUMP OUT THE WINDOW AND FLY, SOAR THROUGH THE COOL NIGHT BREEZE AND LOOK AT THE SEMI-RESTING CITY WITH ALL ITS LIGHTS AND GLITTER AND PATCHES OF SECLUSION.

THAT WAS A VERY LONG SENTENCE.

I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP.

:(

PS. I FORGOT HOW TO TURN OFF CAPS OH NOES IT'S STUCK... FIVE-EVER (DATS MOOOOAR DEN 4EVA)

How to succeed in everything

So inspired by this post from Cindy's blog:

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[following excerpt adapted from 'The Genius in All of Us' by David Shenk]

Deliberate practice

Deliberate practice involves repeated attempts to reach beyond one's current level.

Deliberate practice goes far beyond the simple idea of hard work.

For deliberate practice to work, the demands have to be serious and sustained.

Simply playing lots of chess or soccer or golf is not enough. Simply taking lessons from a wonderful teacher is not enough. Simply wanting it badly enough is not enough.

Deliberate practice requires a mind-set of never, ever, being satisfied with your current ability.

It requires a self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one’s capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and again.

It also requires enormous, life-altering amounts of time – a daily grinding commitment to becoming better.

In the long term, the results can be highly satisfying. But in the short-term, from day to day and month to month, there’s nothing particularly fun about the process or the substantial sacrifices involved.

We do not – and cannot – know our own limits unless and until we push ourselves to them. Finding one’s true natural limit in any field takes many years and many thousand hours of intense pursuit.

What are your limits?

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There is no such thing as failure. Only success that hasn't been pursuited. And it'd do us all some good to remember that. If you want something then work for it. No, really work for it. Go above and beyond what's necessary, what's expected. Only then will you always be at your best. We've all only got one life to live (unless you're a Time Lord rofl). Why waste days of it being someone who's only a fraction of what you could be?

That feeling

That feeling of revelation and liberation that you get. You know? Like an epiphany but not really, because what has dawned on you is something that you've always known all along really. It's like you've been living life in a murky marshland swathed in fog and mud and other thick, dirty substances. They just ooze around your life lazily, trying to contaminate you with their nasty little tentacles. Corrupt you. But that feeling of liberation when for one brief second you see everything so clearly, as if the fog has lifted off the marsh and clear sunlight finally shines upon it and you realise it's not a marsh at all, but a beautiful lake of mysterious depths and clear intentions and a wondrous sense of rightness. That feeling is what I'm trying to describe.

Maybe that's why I like going gym so much now, because sometimes after you wipe off the sweat of all that pain and endurance gone past, it's as if life has been put into a new light. Your brain suddenly wants an audience with you. It takes everything that's tedious or troublesome or unwanted in your life, and it presents a solution. It was something you knew all along. You knew that was the solution. But you forced it into the far reaches of the brain, dismissing it. But now the brain dug it out, laid out the evidence, it need not even argue the case, the case had already been won, because it speaks the truth.

And the most important part of this feeling of liberation, is your own acceptance of it. Of what you need to do. Because it was so simple, why wouldn't you do it before? Your brain is now telling you in a tiny but righteous voice, life could be so easy and effortless and wonderful, if you only do what needs to be done in the way that it needs to be done, and voila. So wonderful a time life will present to you.

One can only hope that somehow, this feeling can be grasped and taken hold of for longer periods of time. Maybe there's some sort of magic that can keep the fog at bay. How to stop such contaminative tentacles of laziness, of greed and of the ever growing lure of the material world, so souless and meaningless? They wrap themselves around everyone. It's like a giant shadow engulfing each of us, a black oozing aura; disgustingly obese with sins. But we don't see it. We embrace. We feed and and love it and grow it.

But how do we stop it?

How?

?