Getting in Tune

  No, I'm not talking about my musical skills, which are pretty limited, though I'm trying to change that. I'm talking about perspective, my continued theme from last week. I have spent several months now working on my goals, while still sticking with the status quo which allows me to earn money while I'm trying to get the rest of this stuff in order. You gotta make some sacrifices (e.g. selling out) to get what you really want (e.g. making a living doing what I enjoy).
    Sidenote/bonus: the inspiration for my post title, and arguably the greatest band in rock and roll history: THE WHO.

    I'll admit, I've become a little despondent about my progress. I'm still enjoying working on my own projects, but I feel like my present track has hit a plateau in terms of progress toward my ultimate goals. It's been very frustrating to have the feeling that I've worked so hard and accomplished so much, while having so little to show for it.
    I feel like I need to revise my strategy, but I feel like everything is running at such a fast pace right now that I don't have quite enough time to reevaluate everything I've been working on to find a way to do it better. It's extremely frustrating to know that you're on a plateau in terms of results and productivity and not having the time to be able to improve it. If I were to stop work on these projects completely to strategize, I'd fall far enough behind that even if I came up with a better strategy, it'd take a lot longer to implement and might even undo some of the progress I've made so far.
    I have scaled back my work on a few things because I was on the verge of burn-out a few weeks ago, and it seems to have helped me get back on track a little bit, but I'm still not where I want to be with these projects. I believe in hard work, and I know nothing comes easy. I just wish I didn't also have to deal with everybody else around me trampling on my goals so that I can become their version of a productive member of society. I'm working on that in my own way with my projects; it's just a process that takes longer, and while more fulfilling, can take a long time to be lucrative, if it ever is.

    The argument against me is: you have to be realistic. You have to have a car. You have to have a place to live. You have to eat. Granted, I do have to eat, but I don't absolutely have to have a car. And if you want to get right down to it, I'd probably survive even if I didn't have a place to live.
    Case in point: I just saw a post about award-winning actors who were once homeless. And then they worked really hard for a few years, caught a break, worked really hard some more, and won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, etc.
    This was inspiring to me. Not that I want to deliberately live out of my car until such a point as I'm successful with my writing, but if these people made it to where they are after living out of their cars or at a bus station or whatever, there's hope for the rest of us with dreams. There are no hand-outs. We all have to put in the work, the perseverance, and the time to get to where we want to be.
    Sometimes that means we have to make sacrifices, and sometimes it means we have to do things that our families and friends disapprove of in order to achieve our dreams. Of course, looking like Halle Berry probably wouldn't hurt.

Success is simply getting up one more time than you fall down. 

(I attribute this to a wall-sign in Jerry Maguire,
but I'm not sure where it came from originally.)