This post started out as a series of Shower ThoughtsTM and we’ll see where it ends up.
Disclaimer: this post is not actually very serious; for entertainment purposes only, consume accordingly.
A wise man1 once said2 that when people look at those who achieve extraordinary success, they admire the results, not the work. They admire what they can see (the big achievement), not what they can’t see (the day-to-day grind, year after year after year). Success is the tip of an iceberg, made up of a much greater amount of mostly invisible hard work and discipline. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as I trudge through the trenches of my writing journey.3
I am not having a good time right now, and one of the few things that is motivating me to keep going is this idea that, should I be so fortunate to one day achieve any measure of success worth admiring, it will have been because of days – months, years – like these. Because of the difficult, unglamorous work that I didn’t quit, even when I really wanted to. It feels like I’ve been pushing a millstone up a mountain (hi, Sisyphus) for an eternity, but it’s actually only been a couple of years, which is NOTHING in the scheme of things. I might be 46, but as a writer, I’m still a baby taking my first steps.
Our culture has become obsessed with instant results (hello, viral success) and it’s warping our brains. Speak for yourself, Adina? OK, fine. I’m pretty sure that a good chunk of my unhappiness is rooted in the feeling that I’m a failure because, after 2 years, I’m still nowhere closer to being an overnight success. But then, as a sometimes-wise woman4 once told a friend, hard work is a lottery ticket, not a guarantee that you’ll win the prize. Hard work buys you admission to the game, but it doesn’t buy you luck. Some things are out of your control, and you just have to accept that and focus on the things that you can control.5
Unrelated but also related: I have adopted a new, late-in-the-year resolution to improve my Spanish. Stay with me here.
I took Spanish for a couple of years in Uni and fell in love with the language. [A lot of that has to do with Latin music, which I adore.] Next to English, it’s my favorite language – sorry to my ancestors, who spoke neither and are now rolling in their graves. Anyway, I didn’t stick with it long enough to become fully proficient back in the day, and then quickly lost most of whatever proficiency I had managed to get because I never used it. [Except for what was necessary to understand bachata lyrics, but I digress.] Recently, I realized that one of my few regrets in life is that I did not work harder, when I was younger, to learn and be fluent in more languages. I think there is something incredible about the ability to think and speak in different languages – even just from a neural plasticity perspective.
So, I’m working on my Spanish again …by watching interviews and documentaries with/about my fave football players6 and clubs. Now, you might be thinking: pero, porque? Like, why that, specifically? Glad you asked, allow me to share my pedagogical theory.
I think there’s a pretty general consensus that, once you have the basics more or less down, the best way to improve your language proficiency is by listening to native speakers speak. There are many ways to do that, including no shortage of conversational coaches on social media, etc. Back in the day, some of my Romanian friends taught themselves Italian by watching Italian soap operas. I decided to take a different approach with Spanish for a few reasons.
One, I want to be exposed to the way Spanish people talk to each other, unscripted. If I can understand that, then understanding the more formal Spanish used in movies or books should be a breeze.
Two, I don’t have access to Spanish reality TV (which I assume exists) and I also don’t have the bandwidth to get emotionally invested in randos talking about their love lives or whatever. When you understand only half of what’s being said at any given time, you need to have some compelling reason to continue listening. Enter football – something I’m currently already invested in. Listening to elite players talk about their sports philosophy also interests me because (as noted in the footnotes and elsewhere) it’s something I can relate back to writing.7 And since Spanish football has been pretty dominant in the last 15-20 years, there’s a lot of content available to watch.
OK, but how is this related to what I was talking about before?
Working on my Spanish is a daily reminder of how consistent practice/work/discipline adds up over time, even if, day to day, it doesn’t seem like it. And that progress doesn’t always feel linear. There are days when I feel like I’m on a roll, picking up 80%+ of what’s being said, and then the day next, I’ll only be able to understand 1 word out of every 5 and feel like a complete loser. But if I look back to where I started, a month ago, the improvement is definitely noticeable. Small but noticeable. I am super curious to see where I’ll be in, say, six months – assuming I can stick with it.8
And you know what? I can say the same thing about writing too. And if I keep saying it, then maybe I won’t quit. That’s what success looks like, baby.9
Thank you for coming to my Shower ThoughtsTM pep talk. If you know any good (Spanish) sports documentaries, preferably about football, let me know in the comments.
1 Fernando Torres
2 In an interview I watched because I’m trying to improve my proficiency in Spanish. I’ll come back to that part later. For the purposes of this part of the discussion, I can confirm that I’m, like, 95% sure I correctly translated this portion of the conversation (which I’m only paraphrasing here).
3 At this point, you may be sure that I will find a way to relate absolutely everything back to one of 2 things: writing and/or football.
4 Me.
5 This bit was also in the above-noted interview. I suspect my man Torres is something of a Stoic at heart, mostly because he name-dropped Marcus Aurelius in said interview as well. [Come to think of it, it would have been more surprising if he hadn’t, being a 40-something white dude and all.]
6 Fernando Torres, mostly.
7 And also, some of them (ahem) are extremely easy on the eyes, which helps a lot when my brain occasionally zones out on translating and I miss, like, five minutes of context I’m too lazy to rewind.
8 On that note, if you’re Spanish, please do not leave me a comment to inform me that my Spanish tutor and sports philosopher, F. Torres, is problematic in some way that I have not yet grasped. If that’s the case,10 let me discover it for myself in six months’ time, when I will (hopefully) be able to understand 100% of what he’s saying. Por favor & gracias.
9 I also stole this bit from Torres, who probably stole it from Marcus Aurelius.
10 I have no illusions left about famous people. The last decade has annihilated them completely. Nothing surprises me anymore.