Dip Velocity

I should have my next Style and Matter post up tomorrow. Right now I’m keeping myself awake to tie up some loose ends, I had to get this out, and I’m just delirious enough to come up with a laughable title like “Dip Velocity.” Anyway, here’s another quote from The Dip:

Successful people don’t just ride out the Dip. They don’t just buckle down and survive it. No, they lean into the Dip. They push harder, changing the rules as they go. Just because you know you’re in the Dip doesn’t mean you have to live happily with it.

This became manifest for me recently. Probably due to a couple things:

1. I’m working pretty hard, on both things that I love and things that I hate. But when asking myself “can’t you work a little harder than this?” the answer is unavoidably yes.

2. A conversation with a great girl I had a few days ago. In many respects, she’s where I used to be: talented and utterly lost. A lot of misplaced blame and needless complication. It was like talking to younger me with better tits.

Among other, work-related instances, these brought some of my poor habits and destructive thought patterns into the light. Some that I’ve succeeded in changing. Some that I’d worked long to reverse, but simply wouldn’t budge–products of years or even decades of neglect. These require nothing less than escape velocity. You have to be going fast enough to break free; just under and it doesn’t matter how long it’s sustained, you’re still traveling in circles.

Right now I’m praying that analogy isn’t in some fucking emo song. I’d probably have to delete this post.

What I’m saying, maybe with hubris but without compunction: I’m ready. I’m ready to lean in. This also means I’m in the shit, and when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll have things to do. I can’t take it back. Except maybe the title. I might have second thoughts about that one.

I know, this is probably too lame and jargony for anyone but me to extract value from. I’ll try to limit the nonsensical catharsis from here on out, but I really wanted to mark this point in time, if for nothing else than personal reference. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow with the post you were probably expecting.