Pride. Pride is a personal matter. Nobody tells you to feel proud, nobody tells you to stop. It’s just you, yourself and a great big cheesy grin. Pride is what happens when you have a final product, be it physical or theoretical, that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, whilst at the same time making you a little bit nauseous because of how much God damn work you had to put into it.
And yet out of sheer lethargy, we often allow so many obstacles to come in between ourselves and that inimitable feeling.
My generation are bloody good at doing that. We go through school, college and maybe even university blaming other people or ‘The System’ for our bad grades, or arguing that we live in a world that doesn’t cater for people who aren’t mathematical geniuses. The problem with that popular school of thought is that photographers, singers, footballers, ballerinas, painters, sculptors, cobblers, plasterers, Olympic champions, property moguls, FX traders, charity workers, models, mechanics and so on and so forth exist. They exist, subsist and indeed thrive in spite of this abhorrent system. Because whilst it may be all too easy to blame everything on your Year 10 Biology teacher, that (albeit generally never too enthralling a) person has not had bestowed upon them the duty of discovering just what it is you are good at. Only you truly know that. Only you know what it is that makes you feel proud.
For a while now, I’ve wanted to write a ‘series’, for want of a better description, about what I deem to be the real hustlers. The grafters. The zero-five-hundred-alarm-setters. The ones that inspire us, humble us and keep us going. Initially, I wanted the series to only feature those who have unusual jobs (strippers, cage fighters, cosmetic surgeons et cetera) in a bid to uncover controversies, dispel rumours and get to the bottom of Kylie Jenner’s lip revolution. But as always, life made amendments to that, and I’ve ended up simply wanting to prove a point: as long as you settle for believing you can’t, you won’t. All it takes is one step in the right direction, one enquiry to the right mind or one gym session to get the proverbial ball rolling. And that’s on you. You have to stick at it, you have to make the sacrifices and you will get to revel in the 2AM eureka moments.
This might all seem slightly odd from someone who could not have pursued a more academic path nor fallen into more of a perfect system-shaped hole. But that’s because what I’m good at needed me to follow that exact path, so I used ‘The System’ to my advantage. It’s what I love, and what I will continue to thrive off of until I decide I just want to eat cake for a living.
So that’s the introduction to a series that may arrive on a blog near you in quick succession, or much slower, depending on how quickly I can round up interviewees. Incidentally, I’m looking for people that haven’t stopped grinding just because Mr. Jones once told them they’d never understand subordinate clauses, or because owning a bakery is too girly, or because blue chip stock trading is something that only happens in Hollywood films. If you’d be happy for an (anonymous if you wish) interview that just might inspire somebody, then please get in touch via the Contact page.
I hope this series does some good.
The Unconventional Hustle: dealing in realities.