On Good Taste and Success

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. 
For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. 
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

As black beans simmer in the slow cooker in the kitchen and I write this, laying in my loft bed in my tiny one bedroom apartment, I have a million things that seem to all have the same ambition of leaving my brain at the same time and become genius works. This is not possible. Bike builds, recipes, true stories, fiction stories, interviews, photos that need to be edited. Amid the stress, Ira Glass made more sense than anything I wrote today.

Gina posted this article on facebook the other day about journalism majors. It made me think of why I majored in journalism and why it makes me so happy. I wouldn't be where I am today without majoring in journalism. It just wouldn't have happened. To anyone who tells you to "change your major because you are never going to make any money". Don't. Sure, there are going to be a few shitty years of making no money, doing crappy work, and asking yourself, "Is this worth it?" It is. It is worth every inverted pyramid you write, every blog post that sucks ass, and every shitty first draft you create.

Write Somthing

"Write something." He said to me.
I looked at him with scared eyes, trying to hide my fear.
"You will get it. Don't worry."

I stared at the keyboard, fingers perched on the home row. I waited for the words to come. Fishing around my brain for the right thing to say. I started to type and then stopped. I wanted this to be perfect the first time. The words had to be right, now. Nothing was coming to me. I went deeper into my mind, a jumbled mess of words desperate to bleed their way out of my brain, through my fingers and onto the digital page. A mess of time pieces, sunglasses, descriptive words for bike parts and nerves that wouldn't stop getting in the way.

All at once the flood gates opened. Like I couldn't contain the bile of words that had projectiled from  my body and into the screen in front of me. This are real. This is real. These words mean something?

It is the getting started that kills me some days. An arsenal of words waiting to escape in a gun fight of rhetoric. Don't let me hurt anyone.

Musings

My friend Gina Cairney recently gave my blog a shout out in a post on her blog. I have felt the obligation update ever since.

I should preface this post with, I write a lot, just not here. Most of my time is spent finding the latest bike stories in Salt Lake City and telling them on SaltCycle. It has been an eye opening and wonderful growing experience. I am reminded time and time again why I majored in journalism to begin with, to tell true stories. Doing interviews with people like Nate King, a local domestique and neo-pro,have shown me different sides of people and the capacity of the human body.  I have also learned that there are a lot of people who yearn for the knowledge of how to fix their bike, or where to ride their bike safely. No one inherently wants to be wrong.

There doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to ride my bike more than 20 miles, make lots of artisan bread, and brew batch after batch of Kombucha. For now I will settle for the few hours I get to relax, slow down, and think about life for a minute while I ride my bike the three miles to the van pool in the morning. These three miles are therapeutic for starting the day. My addiction to exercise before 9 am is what keeps me sane while I sit at a desk all day and write. Everyday I am reminded, in some small way, why I chose bicycles all that time ago.