I skipped last week because…well…I didn’t have anything to say. Not that I really ever have anything to say, but I had drawn a blank. If there’s ever been a writer’s block on nonsense, I had it last week. I guess I just have to make up for it with some extra nonsense this week…
I’ve heard the phrase “not too shabby” before. But does anyone ever just use shabby?
“How was party last night?”
“Pretty shabby.”
Dictionary.com says shabby is “impaired by wear, or showing conspicuous signs of wear or neglect.” I guess that doesn’t really apply to a party. The fourth definition is “meanly ungenerous or unfair; contemptible, as person, actions, etc.” Still not good. Who in the world uses the word contemptible? I always get confused when I have to look up other words that define the word I’m looking up. How is that a useful definition to me? I wish the dictionary would just use slang to make things easier for me haha. Tune down the formal verbiage, Webster, and get with the times.
There’s a saying “when preparation meets opportunity, that’s luck.” What a slap in the face. If I prepare and there’s an opportunity, then, to me, that’s skill or talent; not luck. Why would me succeeding at an available opportunity be luck after I’ve prepped for it. If I get an “A” on a test that I studied for, then why would I credit luck? That’s an insult to the time that I put into succeeding. To me, lack of preparation at an opportunity would equate luck. Winning the lotto is luck. You can’t prepare for that. Accidentally banking a cue ball off of 3 walls and hitting one of your balls into a pocket in pool is luck. If you told Michael Jordan that his game winning shot to win a game was luck, he’d punch you in the head. “Well punch you in the head emotionally.” I appreciate those who followed that reference.
I recently went to this lecture on motivation led by an author named Dan Pink. He just wrote a book called “Drive.” I haven’t read it, and honestly, probably won’t because I feel like I took in all the points out of that lecture anyways. It’s like watching a trailer for a movie and then when it’s over, you say…”meh, it’s a renter…” Not that I don’t think it’d be a good book; I just don’t think I’d get any more out of it.
He talked about using money as incentive, and while some studies showed that simple tasks were improved when offered more money, there was a decrease in performance when the task asked for creativity. Pink ultimately has concluded that three things motivate people: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Why do we practice? To get better at things. And why do we want to get better at things? I thought about it for a while. I realized it’s because it’s fun. We like to be good at things. It’s in our nature to want to not suck at things. We do things we like because they are fun to us, and we keep doing them to get better at it. We keep looking for harder challenges because we like to push ourselves to get over those hurdles. Bigger, harder, faster, greater challenges. And why? Because it’s frustratingly fun and deep inside, we don’t think we can do it. We BELIEVE we will. It’s just a matter of how long before we do.
So keep practicing those things you love to do. There’s a reason we drive ourselves insane; it’s because it’s fun 🙂
Thanks for reading.
– The Shabby Master
