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Essays

The Beginning

Sean Moore

In the real beginning, God decided to get out of bed and go to work.

Inertia.

It seems insurmountable sometimes. I’m reminded of getting back into the habit of running, after a hibernation due to the cold weather. There’s an aure of dread – I have to get up and exercise? – that’s unescapable. It’s a choking, cloying smothering feeling of desparation. Wouldn’t it just be easier to stay inside, grab a donut, and watch people perform physical activity on TV. All too often, the procrastinator in me wins out.

But eventually I get the nerve to put on a pair of shoes and move my legs. Oh no, they most certainly don’t want to move. But eventually, my heart remembers that beating 120 times a minute is enjoyable. My feet remember that there was a time when they weren’t dragging on the pavement on the way to class. My lungs remember that fresh air exists. And my brain remembers the exhilaration getting lost in the middle of a city, forgetting whatver stress may exist in school.

And more importantly, the next day is easier – so is the day after that too, and the next one, and so on. There’s something special about a start, a simple of elegance of just proving to yourself that you can do it once.


It’s the same way when I’m starting a new project. I look at these programmer hotshots – the ones that can develop an app in the spare time of their day job (which, unsurprisingly, is a full-time programming job), that write code for ten hours straight without breaking a sweat, that get up and do it all over again the next day.

Here I am, barely writing a single line without heading to Stack Overflow or the documentation to remind myself how to call a function. Four hours, or less on a school day, and I’m brain dead and bleary-eyed. And the next day, I’ve got a programming hangover in the worst possible way.

The gulf between where I am and where I want to be feels insurmountable, and worse, it feels like it’s widening all the time. Another step forward, and it’s right off the cliff, never to return.


Okay okay – back off from the cliff.

Whether it’s running, programming, knitting, whatever, just remember, you and I aren’t born with these skills. And neither were those “masters”, those that we look up to. No one becomes great in a day. We just build upona succession of tiny little victories, until one day, looking back, we wonder how we ever got to the other side of that cliff.

And make no mistake, it does get easier. Sometimes, it’s as simple as getting started. Other times, it’s getting started and failing 100 times. Slowly but surely, ten minutes without getting frustrated or giving up, becomes fifteen, becomes thirty, becomes an hour, two hours, becomes ten.

What’s the saying? Something like 10,000 hours to make a task a habit. Sure; but it takes a hell of a lot less time to know you’ll make it those 10,000.

And more importantly, you can’t have 10,000 hours before you have one. So just start.