Ev BogueI ask myself this question constantly: "have you settled?"
What is settling?
Settling is the act of plopping down in one place and never moving. Have you ever driven along the highway, and glanced an old car in the middle of a field, with all of the plants growing up through the windshield? That's settled.
Settling isn't putting down roots, it's allowing roots to come up and drag me down.
It doesn't take long to get to settled. Every day presents a million opportunities to settle.
Settling is restricting my own freedoms. No one else settles for me, it's all me. It's a decision that I've made for myself. Settling is choosing to eat less than healthy food. It's choosing to flip on the Internet TV or surf social media all day, instead of doing the work.
Settling is when I start padding my life, in an attempt to avoid suffering. But padding just creates more suffering for me (I know this, because I've padded with booze, I've padded with bacon egg and cheeses, and I've padded with a job for far longer than I wanted.)
I could eat a sugar-covered something or other, in the hopes that I'd forget that I have to do the work every day. But then I'd be padding. One donut leads to five leads to me outgrowing my pants.
Putting my feet up never resulted in anything other than a larger stomach.
Here are some other examples of settling, off the top of my head.
- Walking into a coffee shop, order a latte, surfing Google+ for three hours (instead of writing.)
- Not hitting publish (because it's too scary.)
- Not walking there (because it's too far.)
- Doing the work on someone else's site (instead of mine.)
- Convincing myself that it's too hard (before I start.)
- Not asking for money (even though I know I'm worth it.)
- Not spending money (even though I know it's worth it.)
- Turning on the TV (even though there's nothing on.)
- Endless asking people for the answers (even though I know, the only thing that works is experimenting.)
When I look around me, I see people who've settled. Entropy has started to do it's work on them (because they aren't doing the work.) This has always been the case: people have been settling for all of time. It's just easier.
When I moved to Portland two years ago, and I was quickly running out of money, a few people told me to get food stamps. "It's really easy, it's like free money." But that would have been settling. Taking free money, in exchange for what? In exchange for settling.
Settling appears to be the state of the nation. When I read the newspaper, I see a government doing their best to prop a lot of people up who won't do the work. These people want to be told what to do. They want someone to come along and tell them that everything will be alright.
Well, I'm here to tell you: it won't be alright. Not unless you get up, and do the fraking work. Every single day.
We could be a nation of Facebook surfers, but then we'd be a nation of couch surfers.
Here's what I want to know from you. Not later. Right now.
Are you settling?
If not, let's hear what you're working on.
It's time to untether from anything that's keeping us from our work.