Accomplishment Sucks

I'm not a self-help guru. I'm not a philosopher. I do not write from a place of authority but through the lens of my own flawed observations regarding my past experiences. Sometimes my ideas resonate with others, sometimes not, and oftentimes I modify my opinions because of changes in circumstance. The beauty of recording these thoughts is that they shift like Autumn leaves, though ever in flux, transforming and oscillating with the season that is each week.

At a first glance, this final week was a poor finish to these past 13. A period migraine took me out on Monday; it was more taxing than usual on Tuesday to transcribe what amounted to, when excluding the 2-hour combat, an hour and a half long session; writing was a flop for various reasons; and though yesterday, Thursday, was one of my usual days off, I was overcome with a very rare bout of depression. Really, the only accomplishment from the week I can humbly brag about is my running time:

(Wednesday & today respectively)

Yeh, that's right. Two days back to back where I crushed my goal pace~

On my walk home, I contemplated why I was feeling so euphoric, you know, aside from those yummy, yummy endorphins.

Yes, on the surface, the most obvious reason would be the sense of accomplishment that accompanies reaching a difficult goal, but there's more nuance to it than that.

Accomplishment correlates with challenge; with challenge, there's a degree of suck involved.

Although running is the primary example and the avenue through which I arrived at my conclusion, the topic can apply to, as far as I know, any pursuit. For the purposes of illustrating my point, however, I'm going to continue with the running example.

My challenge was to run at a pace below 6'00"/km while contending with hills. To achieve this goal, I needed to hasten my pace, but pushing too hard uphill would only exhaust me, and running too recklessly downhill could cause injury. Knowing how and when to push myself has been the most demanding aspect of improving my pace, but improving really does boil down to pushing my limits.

Oh, but it sucks. Jogging harder for longer so the body can acclimate to the constant but gradual increase in velocity? It's not fun, especially while in the midst of the jog itself. Huffing and puffing, hocking up phlegm, stitches in the side, unable to keep to a consistent breath cycle, the list continues. When dumping my misery out on the table in such a way, the goal doesn't seem worth the torture, does it?

It's true that I could run at a comfortable pace and not worry about any of those side effects. In fact I've been doing that for years now! It certainly sucks less. It's far more enjoyable during the jog, too. Yet therein also lies the issue for me: accomplishment and comfort do not make good companions.

"But you jogged today. Isn't that in itself an accomplishment?"

Once upon a time, when I loathed running and dreaded every running day, I would have said, "Yes, that is an accomplishment," and I would have enjoyed my 5 minutes of preening. Yet at some point, completing the task no longer feels like much of an accomplishment, because it's moved on from being something done occasionally or out of necessity to a habit instead, hopefully an enjoyable one.

I've reached that relationship with running. Heck, it's my preferred method of exercise, even though I still love strengthening my upper body. The only situation in which a jog alone feels like an accomplishment is on a day where I'm struggling with the mere thought of going on one, like it would have been on Thursday. It really did follow the journey of sucking to bearable to enjoyable for me.

That said, it still sucks to push the limits of those boundaries. The only way it's worth the struggle is if your goal is achievable within that golden zone of time, which changes from person to person and circumstance to circumstance. Soon, reaching 5'46"/km consistently won't suck as much. I dare say, it may even become the new average, in which case it would be time to push again. I do still have 20 seconds to shave off before I reach my best recorded time for week 4, after all. However, I will be moving on from week 4 to week 5, since I'm happy with where that pace is and want to alter how I challenge myself again.

Prolonged complacency, while comfortable, kills accomplishment. Please, don't misunderstand me; I believe there's a time for complacency, despite the negative connotation ascribed the word, because a lack of satisfaction in everything leads only to misery. As someone with a penchant for having high standards, I can attest to that personally.

It's perfectly fine to be complacent in certain areas of your life, even your career. Your job could literally be there to earn you enough money so you can enjoy the personal challenge of trying new recipes or your own experimental variation on recipes. I think that's quite lovely. But overall complacency can get boring and lead to the feeling that you're lacking a direction or that there's no opportunity for growth. This type of complacency can also lead to misery.

Yet push too much too consistently in achieving ever greater heights and you twist goal achievement into the ugliness that is today's hustle culture, where you must be improving constantly in all aspects of your life in order to be successful using whatever abstract metric society defines success as being for you. That is how people burn out. I'd become cynical, too, if someone told me I could never be happy with where I am and have to always strive to be better.

Oh wait. I've done that to myself.

Except there will come a point where, no matter how hard I strive to improve, I won't be able to better my jogging pace; to try and fail repeatedly would only frustrate and discourage me. Shoot, I even recognize that I, as a mortal being doomed to age and someday die, won't be able to keep that pace forever. It's okay to let go of the need to always improve and grant yourself permission to be happy with where you are and what you have accomplished.

Once you find what challenges are worthwhile, carrying the process through to completion balances out the suck. That's what makes them accomplishments.

Other Notable Accomplishments:

• I voted yesterday!

• I've started keeping a small sketchbook on me to serve as an ideas & doodles book; I've had it for a long time and never knew what to do with it until now

Questions for Contemplation & Discussion:

• In what area(s) of your life have you grown complacent and could use a challenge to give yourself a boost?

• In what area(s) of your life are you pushing, perhaps, too hard and could stand to lessen the load and enjoy where you are?

• What is something you once hated but now appreciate or even enjoy?

• When was the last time you tried something new?

• When was the last time you revisited an old pastime that you quit because you'd never be "good enough" at it to make it worthwhile? What happens if you revisit it now?

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Qiri