One page at a time
This week, I'm struggling to find motivation.
I started writing a story a while ago. I thought it would be a few pages, but the more I wrote, the more ideas came to mind. Little by little, I’ve watched the paper count grow. It’s exciting to see that number increase and to that progress is being made.
This weekend I hit page 26.
And I hit a wall.
This happens a lot when I write. I can’t tell you how many word documents I have with just shy of 30 pages of text in them.
There’s something really thrilling about watching your page count go from 3 pages to 5 pages. Or even 7 pages to 10 pages. It feels like something significant is being added. It feels like the story is growing in leaps and bounds. There’s so much there that wasn’t there before!
But somehow watching the count jump from 22 pages to 26 pages seems trivial. Just another 4 pages. Nothing special. Now that the initial excitement is gone and the first few milestones have been achieved, the next big goal is finishing the story. But when will that happen? It hasn’t happened in 26 pages. Will it be 56 pages? 126 pages? 426 pages? Who knows?
Those 4 pages are negligible. They could easily disappear in editing. What’s the big deal about 4 pages?
Sometimes, I feel the same way about my PhD as I do about my writing. The first year of my PhD was filled with lots of deliverables and incremental measures of success. Each felt like a little victory, another step to getting my degree. Now, I’m caught in a long stretch with no milestones. I just have to keep reading literature, performing experiments, and analyzing results. And I know only so much of it will end up in my final thesis. Today’s work could be entirely unhelpful.
Or it could be the most important part. The same goes for those four pages. They may be the most important in the story. It’s too soon to tell.
And whether those pages or those experiments are the most important or the first to get cut, they’re progress. They’re critical to getting to the end goal, though it may not always seem like it. Even though I know this, it’s still difficult to find motivation. Why do another experiment when it will probably fail? Why write another four pages when I’ll probably rewrite them?
Why not?
Why not give it my best?
Why not put everything I’ve got into these projects?
Why not do what I love, even though it’s difficult?
Why not tackle this obstacle one page at a time?
I started writing a story a while ago. I thought it would be a few pages, but the more I wrote, the more ideas came to mind. Little by little, I’ve watched the paper count grow. It’s exciting to see that number increase and to that progress is being made.
This weekend I hit page 26.
And I hit a wall.
This happens a lot when I write. I can’t tell you how many word documents I have with just shy of 30 pages of text in them.
There’s something really thrilling about watching your page count go from 3 pages to 5 pages. Or even 7 pages to 10 pages. It feels like something significant is being added. It feels like the story is growing in leaps and bounds. There’s so much there that wasn’t there before!
But somehow watching the count jump from 22 pages to 26 pages seems trivial. Just another 4 pages. Nothing special. Now that the initial excitement is gone and the first few milestones have been achieved, the next big goal is finishing the story. But when will that happen? It hasn’t happened in 26 pages. Will it be 56 pages? 126 pages? 426 pages? Who knows?
Those 4 pages are negligible. They could easily disappear in editing. What’s the big deal about 4 pages?
Sometimes, I feel the same way about my PhD as I do about my writing. The first year of my PhD was filled with lots of deliverables and incremental measures of success. Each felt like a little victory, another step to getting my degree. Now, I’m caught in a long stretch with no milestones. I just have to keep reading literature, performing experiments, and analyzing results. And I know only so much of it will end up in my final thesis. Today’s work could be entirely unhelpful.
Or it could be the most important part. The same goes for those four pages. They may be the most important in the story. It’s too soon to tell.
And whether those pages or those experiments are the most important or the first to get cut, they’re progress. They’re critical to getting to the end goal, though it may not always seem like it. Even though I know this, it’s still difficult to find motivation. Why do another experiment when it will probably fail? Why write another four pages when I’ll probably rewrite them?
Why not?
Why not give it my best?
Why not put everything I’ve got into these projects?
Why not do what I love, even though it’s difficult?
Why not tackle this obstacle one page at a time?
