Impossible is Nothing

Impossible is Nothing

I’ve felt a lot of initiative in the last couple weeks with the ringing in of the New Years. I see coworkers and friends around me who are working hard to lose weight, to shape up, and to learn new skills. I’m joining them personally, and two weeks in, I’m at the point where I’ll either give up completely or I’ll keep going for the rest of the year.

One of the things I’ve been working on is creating a daily writing habit. I’ve been working (slowly) on a novel over the last couple months, and I have a due date to finish this piece. I keep notes on what happens with the characters, and I work semi-diligently on the scenes that come to my mind for their story. It’s a long story that I will only hint at here, but I’m happy to be working on it.

What’s really been sticking out for me lately is my own focus on music to keep me going. I’ve always found music to be a source of inspiration, and I’ve created a bunch of playlists to keep me going. I’ve enlisted Pandora, Songza, Spotify and several other music apps on my smartphone and computer to feed my need for catchy upbeat songs to write to. I thought I would obsess over one album in particular, but I’ve been streaming a bunch of music from all genres.

Something clicked in my head today about one song in particular. I’ve never understood the line “You gotta hate to not have it more than you’d love to obtain it,” until now. It’s from Iggy Azalea’s song “Impossible is Nothing” and I don’t know what brought on this understanding, but I get it now.

Let me start by saying, I love my job. I really do love the rush and the pitch and almost everything that has to do with sales. I love being able to pull all the stops out and give a customer the best service they could possibly get from a sale.

But I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. I’m already burnt out from giving it my all and I’ve only been at this position for half of a second at the most. I’m good at this job, but deep in the marrow of my bones, I can sense that this is not where I belong. Maybe it was the words of my coworkers, maybe it was looking at college programs this afternoon, but I can say with certainty that this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I’ve been working slowly on a novel for the last six months. I’ve been fantasizing about the finish line for a while with it, but slowly working my way towards--crawling, really. I’ve been thinking about obtaining it and how great that would be. I’ve been pinning hopes on “what ifs” and “could haves” to get me by as I inch through a story I have mostly written in my head.

Up until this point, I didn’t hate to not have it.

Now, I do.

Now, I want to finish this story that’s been playing in my mind for the last six months and I want to do it in a timely fashion. I’ve got a countdown on my phone for my deadline, but I want to finish it before then. I want to finish it before I get into another program. I keep telling myself that I’m not a “gusher” when it comes to writing, but I think it’s because I keep telling myself that I’m not. It’s time to let the vein flow and let the words onto the page.