On Success

Ericka surprised me yesterday by saying that I was successful. Not that I’m not successful, it’s just that I never thought about it before. How do you measure success, anyway?

I’m a drifter in terms of life’s worries—unless they’re in my face, staring me down day after day, I don’t think or revel in wins and losses. I appreciate the wins and remember the highs, but if I fail miserably I tend to sweep it aside and forget about it soon after.

When I asked her to explain what she meant, Ericka then revealed to me obvious things I simply didn’t think about: I keep my family of four fed, clothed, and housed on my salary and subsequent income. I design and develop video games, I’m a network admin, I write for both fun and profit. I do both creative and productive things to keep me going and I’m always busy.

It was the last sentence that really struck home. I realized this:

If you’re busy, you’re successful.

Even if you’re just ‘running in circles’, it’s better than running into a wall, right? No matter where you go there you are and all that.

When I was a teenager I was severely depressed. My wife tends to give me an unbelieving look when I bring it up, because at some point my confidence simply exploded (a story for another time), but I think back and realize that I was also severely un-busy. I had very little to do. I sat around feeling sorry for myself in between IRC chat and playing Quake. It was not what anyone would (or could) call a ‘healthy environment.’

So as for me, I think that staying busy is staying afloat. If you’re not treading water you’re drowning.

Don’t make me take a ride on the analogy train, because I will.

After the conversation had passed and I continued to think about it, it made me grateful. Not everyone has the ability to do what they love in their spare time (develop and design games) and do what they like as their dayjob (network administration), providing the means for their wife to stay at home and their daughters to always be there when they need them.

I’m not bound by a babysitter or daycare. We don’t run the ratrace of trying to make it home for dinner every night, and I get more homecooked meals—by a large margin—than any other married person I know.

So after I digested all of this it humbled and inspired me. It made me realize that while all of my endeavors are sometimes tiring, if I slack off everything begins to slow down. As much as I may complain or vocally observe how busy I am, if there’s something I definitely don’t want to be it is not busy.

Being ‘not busy’ makes everything slow down, makes everything look drab, and makes the world much less exciting.

So thanks to my wonderful wife for reminding me how busy I am, and how my success has sprung from it. I hope you are busy in your life, because if there’s always something to do and strive for, there’s always hope. And hope is what I lacked when I was a teenager, but it is what I am filled with today.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I hear the sirens in the street
All my dreams are made of chrome, I have no way to get back home