grit

I’m reading two books at the moment, being as I am on holiday and all, this is one of my guilty pleasures about being stuck in the country and just catching up on my reading.

One of the books is a handbook about love and marriage, written by a buddhist monk (who the fuck knows how he would have much to say about either, I thought buddhist monks were celibate and didn’t marry! Its like getting pre-marriage advice from a catholic priest, right? *shrug*)

Anyway, the other book is called “Grit – The power of passion and perseverance” and I am enjoying it immensely.

I bought all these books a while back and as with many books I bought when I was pregnant, on bedrest or breastfeeding and bleary eyed, I bought them with great intentions of reading them but instead they lay around collecting dust.

But hey, now that my kids can talk and fetch their own drinks from the fridge, I do get a bit of breathing room to do a few things I enjoy for myself, like a quick TRX workout, a 40 minute session of yoga, or even read two books in the same day, at differing intervals during the day.

Grit, I think, is about how talent, although its a good thing to have, isn’t the indicator of success. That truly successful people at the top of their fields, more than anything, had grit.

The ability to persevere despite great lows along with great highs, and really, the power to “Never give up”.

When I was in boarding school, our school motto was just that, “Never give in”…the school song had something about never giving up and never giving in…

A song about grit, I guess.

I can’t say I have always had grit, but I can confirm that I do now.

Grit, it seems, isn’t some secret, finite thing we have, its something we can work on and even get more of!

I think, for me anyway, part of what has helped me become more self-aware and more willing to stay the course, has been the initial learning that I can in fact finish what I start. That I can persevere and that I can have passion for a set outcome.

Knowing what you want, that is important.

With the jewellery making, with the whole process of getting into the jewellery business to begin with…I never really thought about it initially, but I know how many times I have decided to give up and then just coerced myself to keep going. I have been selling jewellery for more than three years now, but it feels like an eternity.

And now as I think of myself and what I do, I am more sure of where I want to be, really, just the general direction in which I hope to continue in.

Its still daunting, of course, I still have moments where I lie awake at night, unable to calm my anxiety, worrying about whether or not I will be able to do all the things I wish to do, how I would be able to fund it and more importantly, how I am meant to juggle motherhood with the demands of running a successful business.

Sometimes I feel like I am failing at almost all of it, but as the kids get older, I have more moments of feeling like I am succeeding than I am failing. I don’t know if its because they are simply old enough to communicate and get their own apple juice from the fridge, but I do think maybe I am learning to be more comfortable in my role as a mother of three kids.

I think, I am beginning to feel like this is what I do and that what I do is awesome, vs feeling inadequate because this is somehow ALL that I am.

I felt boxed in and marginalized after having Sasha and Micah so close together. I think, with Jakob, him being a footnote on a very acrimoniously ended relationship, I always felt like there was Jakob and there was Me. We were together some of the time, but I always had this part of me that was mine alone, I had the time to develop me the individual who was quite happy to be considered an individual first and a mother next, or even to fight for the dichotomy of being both but to not be pigeonholed as just “Mother”.

Which is kind of what happens when you no longer have a job and your primary reason for existence is to take care of the household and the kids.

You lose a sense of who you are, in many ways, I know I did. I felt bound up to this 24/7 existence of being mother, wife, nurturer and crypt keeper! I just…sometimes all I wanted to do was run for the hills.

I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel more me, even as a mother, than I have ever felt in my life.

I don’t know whether its simply because I am getting old enough to not give a fuck what others think, or maybe its because I actually believe I sell jewellery for a living that I don’t view myself as being jobless and hence answering, “Nothing” when someone asks me that awful yet unavoidable first question, “What do you do?”

Who knows. Maybe I don’t meet enough new people? Odd thing is, in Hong Kong, everyone asks this as a top 5 when it comes to initial getting to know you type questions. But here, now that I am in Japan for a bit, although I have met a lot of new people, not one has asked me what I do. No one cares what you do over here, you are you, you are not what you do.

So bizarre, but maybe that is the difference between the fast paced life in a city vs the glacial speed of life in the country.

I think, now more than ever, I am content with where I am at, where I believe I am going, the direction in which I believe I am heading and the hows and whens of getting there. Even the more left field interests I have, I consider. Like, I want to take a course on plant based nutrition through Cornell University, online. Its a damned good course, but the course fee kinda makes me realize that if I am to be serious about it, maybe I need to be setting aside USD200 a month for the next 6 months before I apply for it and get the certificate. I enjoy learning, but to just plonk down the almost USD1300 for the course in one go, it feels a bit extravagant for something I am doing purely for my own curiosity vs it being for a vocational purpose.

Oh sure, I may find myself more and more interested and I could end up going on to do some serious study that could further enhance my knowledge of plant based living, but I don’t think I would end up becoming a vegan nutritionist or some shit.

At least, for now, that is not my intention.

I do know, and this is what I know about myself after almost 40 years walking this great planet, that I love to learn. I love to know more about something I am interested in…and if that is how I am, it only seems fair to make every effort to keep being that way. Nothing worse than complacency in life, right?

Initially, a few years ago, I started to learn about jewellery making. First I tried to learn about PMC (precious metal clay) and although I had a lot of interest in the subject, the only opportunities I had to learn how to work with PMC were limited to one teacher and sadly, that teacher was rather lackluster. Of course, it could be that I was too arrogant to learn at the time, maybe if I went back now I would be ready to accept the knowledge in the way it was being disseminated. Who knows, but I think after having taken jewellery making courses with the lady over at the PMC studio and also a more basic version of a proper jewellery smith type course set up where you learn to saw, solder and set…I feel like, in order to have the freedom I hope to in order to work with the materials I want to…it looks like PMC is the way I will have to go in order to achieve the results I hope to achieve.

Of course, this has been years in the mental process of coming around to goals. The end goal remains the same, that I wish to design and shape, actually create my own one of a kind pieces, but the paths with which I intend on achieving said goal, remain open and mutable.

If you had asked me 3 years ago what I do, I would say that I keep myself busy and that I sell “this and that”. But now, I am pretty confident that I sell jewellery. In 3 years from now I will likely be confident that I not only sell jewellery but that I design and create custom one of a kind pieces.

3 years.

It would have sounded like I lifetime at a certain juncture of my life, but now, it seems like something as natural to consider as breathing.

Being able to envision the future, something I was loathe to do in my 20’s and early 30’s, has become a passion of mine, in so much as I no longer fear it, I welcome it.

I welcome the tide of years to come. I no longer mourn for the years gone by and I honestly am ecstatic (as I always knew I would be) at the prospect of finally turning 40.

I know sometimes I say I am worried I am getting old, but really, I am not. The prospect of being aged, like 70+ and possibly in ill health, that scares the crap out of me, but I hope I never have to worry about that.

Once my knee heals from the ACL replacement surgery coming up, I intend to hit the gym twice as hard, work on the heavy lifting and to build the legs and butt I have always wanted, the rest, I genuinely believe, will follow.

If I had grit before, in my pursuit of some semblance of fitness, you can expect to see me at my grittiest once I am completely fixed and whole again.

I know I am capable of so much more than what I currently bring to the table, in the gym and at work, and I intend on making more of myself in the years to come.

Mark my words, I will not quit.

One day, I will look back on this moment and recall just how driven I was, but more than anything, how my passion and perseverance paled in comparison to where I am when I take that moment to look back in time 🙂

Now to go back to reading about the research on grit, certainly a lot to learn in that book.