The Hard Things

For some reason, I feel like writing a new blog post. But I don't have a particular subject, so I'm just going to blather on for a while until I run out of things to say.

So I've been writing this book recently. It's interesting. I keep not wanting to write, but once I sit down and start reading, I make a lot of progress in not very much time. Honestly, the hardest part is just making myself sit down to write because I keep telling myself that I want to do something more interesting with my time. Between Sunday and Monday, I wrote over 3,000 words because I just sat down and wrote for a total of maybe 3 hours (probably a bit less, actually). That's a lot of words, considering a full-length novel is usually around 80,000 words. That means that, if I could sit down and write for eight hours a day like a normal job, and sustain only half that pace, I could write a full book (granted, with no editing) in a month. That's incredible. Basically, I just need to sit down and write.

It's funny how many other things are like that, too. Like, homework. Some homework, of course, does take a lot of time, but a lot of other homework doesn't. We just don't start it because we keep putting it off. Procrastination really kills creative productivity. Or, if you expand out of simply talking about time, but just looking at things that are hard to do, it's amazing how many things we fail to do simply because they're hard, even if we actually have the ability to do them. It reminds me of something G. K. Chesterton said: "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." What's true of Christianity is true of so many other things as well. We look at a task ahead of us, and rather than setting ourselves up in God's strength to overcome that task, we decide it's too hard and pick something else instead. Let's not do that. Let's actually do the hard things, because they're better for us.

Of course, that takes a lot of work. It's really hard to train our wills to go with the things that are hard because we tend to want comfort. We want to feel good, and not actually be good. But in the end, if we take the time to work hard and do the hard things, if we train ourselves to WANT to do those things, it's SO much better than otherwise. I have to keep telling myself this over and over again. I don't do a very good job of it yet, but oh, I WANT to. I want to have the strength of will to choose the hard things and stick with them, because that will make me a better person and will make me more like Christ for the day when I can finally see him face to face.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." - 1 Cor. 13:12

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." - 1 John 3:2