The long game

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my future. There's a lot of reasons for that, but suffice to say that I'm reaching a point where I find that it's something that I really have to sit down and do. This isn't normally a thing that I would write about, much less post publicly, but I sit here looking at this blank page, at this blog in general, and I think that it's something relevant to talk about.

It seems like a lot of the things that I'm interested in, that I want to do, are things that I have to play the long game for. Things that you can't just go out and do and expect to be successful. I understand that that's just a thing in life, that you really can't pick any one thing and expect to immediately be rolling in the dough for it. But I would think that most things you can at least expect some payback for right off the bat. But the things that I'm interested in pretty much start off at zero.

The most obvious of these is my writing. It's my biggest passion, the thing that makes me happiest, and it is entirely dependent upon luck. Not only do you have to put a significant amount of time into writing, and editing, and more writing, and more editing, even once it's finally complete and out on the market you can't be sure that you'll get anything from back from it. Somehow you have to get the word about it to spread, and even then it has to be something people want to read. And honestly, I don't really know how to do that.

I don't really understand the long game. Not objectively speaking, but personally. I can't wrap my head around doing something over and over, trying to make it better, until it actually becomes successful. If things don't happen for me quickly, I find it difficult to continue doing them. It's not that I don't want to. I just have trouble comprehending it. It's incredibly disconcerting when you put tons of effort into something, and you see little in return. To be honest, this blog is a good example of that.

I hear people say this all the time, so I'm not breaking any new grounds here saying this. But it's something that I'm becoming increasingly more aware of as I go. You have to do something because you enjoy it. You have to push on it, improve it, and enjoy every piece of it. And eventually you enjoy it so much, that people can't help but look upon it and enjoy it too.

But god damn if it isn't hard. I don't know what I would do if, someday, it didn't pay off. Writing is truly my passion. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my writing is my life. It truly feels like I'm pouring my heart and soul into my stories. I understand that it may not look like it at times, and I have a long way to go. But this is what I want, and somehow I have to get there. I'm trying to learn the long game. I just don't know what all the steps are yet.