Fun with #OkCupid: A dude in the OKC corral (Working Hard or Beginner's Pottery)
<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Kenny. We e-met through OKC and although we've never gone out on a date, he was inspired by my documentation of my online search for love, that he wanted to come on board and provide male insight into OKC. So here you go ... and now we're here ... HIT IT KENNY!! </editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @casetines
I’ve known for a pretty long time that I wanted to be a writer. I’m not sure that it was ever a deliberate choice, or a conscious one, but it was just naturally what I wanted to do.
People have been telling me recently that I’m good at it, which gives me hope that I can become a full-time professional writer, but getting good at it was not natural. I may have only gotten back into blog writing on a regular basis back in March, but it’s something I’ve been doing off and on for ten years. It was something I sucked at for the majority of that time and it wasn’t until I started writing 20-30 hours a week that I actually became readable.
It’s funny that people sort of assume that artistic talents are natural. That Walt Whitman was shat out of his mother’s womb and immediately penned his first great poem. That Jimi Hendrix was a master at the guitar at age two. That Picasso’s finger paintings as a 6-month-old were better than what 99% of adult painters could do. But it doesn’t work like that.
It’s true that some of the world’s greatest minds, artists, and athletes displayed incredible ability at a young age, but that doesn’t mean hard work wasn’t involved. Bobby Fischer, the greatest chess champion of all-time, was remarkably the best in the world at age 16. A natural? He’d already been in intensive training for nine years. No natural gifts are molded without intense practice and hard work.
The only natural talent these greats share is a penchant for being obsessed with being the best. This isn’t even something that I understood until recently. I wanted to be a great screenwriter because I felt I had natural ability… so I didn’t put any work into it. My slightly younger self would look at me now and say “You smarty, me dumb” and he’d be absolutely right.
I was an idiot.
My foolishness really began in college when I took a screenwriting class. It was my first time really writing a screenplay, but I just knew I wanted to make movies. That was the business for me. We would turn in assignments, share them with the class, and discuss them.
I was the star pupil. That’s nice.
For the first time in my life I was good at something. Not only that, I was the “best” at something. It didn’t matter if I was the best in a group of 20 beginners; I was never the best before. I was the kid who got picked second to last in P.E., and only picked second to last because even though I was a terrible athlete, I was the tallest and had good friends. I once played an entire little league season and got just one hit. One day, I was playing the outfield and a fly ball came towards me, I freaked out, and it hit me square in the eye.
That was probably a good sign that I should write about sports, not play them. Truthfully, it wasn’t that I lacked the natural gifts to be good at sports, I just lacked an obsessive desire to get better. I wanted to get better, but I would quit after 30 minutes of frustration. That’s why I wasn’t a “natural” at baseball or other sports. Naturally, I wanted to do something else.
So when I realized that people in my screenwriting class would see my work with envy, it was like an epiphany that I had found my gift. This is my ticket to respect, a word that I had heard of before, but never felt! 
Then I went on to not write a screenplay for years, waiting for a Hollywood agent to call me and tell me to write a sequel to Beautician and the Beast (because that should be easy enough) and I’d have my in. No call came.
But I was naturally good at screenwriting! Or was I? Would it be no different than knowing everything about psychology just because you took Psych 101?
The truth is, I did have a knack for writing screenplays and stories. Ideas come very easy to me, I can weave a story together in minutes, jokes are like second-nature, and writing dialogue between two characters is easier for me to do than to have an actual conversation. Isn’t that natural, if I’ve never written a screenplay before? No, not really. Why?
Because I’m the kind of guy that worked at a Hollywood Video for six months and watched 300 movies during that time. I’m the kind of guy who can remember seeing his first movie, Die Hard, when I was three years old. (Yeah, Die Hard is the first movie I remember watching. Yippee Ki-yay.) Much like Abed in Community, I was “naturally” surrounded by film and television because that’s what I was obsessed with. I was studying, and not knowing it. Cool. Cool-cool-cool.
Which brings me to Beginner Pottery. In a season one episode of Community, part of the study group starts to take pottery as a “blow-off class” and Jeff gets upset when there appears to be a student that’s naturally amazing at pottery and much better than Jeff. If you watch the show, then you already know this. If you don’t watch the show, then you’re part of the problem. WATCH IT!
Jeff’s counter-part is amazing at pottery but claims to have never done it before, which Jeff refuses to accept. In the end we find out that (Spoiler Alert! Do you really need a spoiler alert for this? You should have watched it already, and it’s still going to be funny anyway.) he was indeed doing pottery for his entire life and that he had a very dark history involving his obsession with pottery.
There is no natural talent that makes you amazing at something on day one.
Studies have found certain numbers like the 10-year-rule and 10,000 hours. Numbers that define how much work you must put into practicing and getting better at something before you can really become great at it. Even then, the numbers aren’t an average; they are more like a minimum. It’s not that some people put in 5 years and some put in 15, it’s more like if you’re lucky its 10 years but for some people its 20 or 30.
Tiger Woods became the youngest ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship at age 18. He had been playing and practicing for 16 of those years. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Peyton Manning, Ken Griffey, Jr., you can’t find a single Hall of Fame talent that didn’t work hard at it every single day. I remember hearing about Jerry Rice out-working and out-practicing rookies up until the day he retired at the age of 42. Think about that. Maybe the greatest football player of all-time, a guy who had nothing to prove in his 40’s, was still working harder than a 22-year-old rookie who was getting his first shot at the pros.
As a writer, one who loves to make people laugh whenever possible, my hero is Louis C.K. He’s the absolute best working today. He’s the newest era in comedy. Every so often, someone comes along in comedy that changes the entire game. Louis isn’t the first person to do it, he’s just the latest. (Buy his latest special on his website for $5! The way he’s distributing his work is just one of the ways he’s changing comedy, right now, as I write this!)
So if he’s the best, if he’s a genius, then he probably just walked onto a stage and killed it and immediately got on the Tonight Show, right? I mean, doing comedy should just be “if you’re funny, you’re funny, right?”
Well, for one, Louis quit trying comedy for two years after his first performance because it went so poorly. When he returned, it took him over ten years of hard work, performing multiple shows a night every night, getting paid scraps, to get on HBO for the first time.
That’s the other thing about hard work that people don’t understand. You might be stuck at the bottom for ten years or more. It doesn’t matter how talented you are, it doesn’t even matter how hard you work, it only matters about how long you’ve been working hard. It’s amazing how often people still complain about not getting what they want after “1 or 2 years of really busting my ass!”
“1 or 2 years?” Are you kidding me? Look, you might want to be a talent agent… So you get your first job at an agency and you’re working 80 hours a week, doing shit work, for no pay, seeing your bosses do less work for six figures or more, and that seems unfair. As if your bosses walked into the agency, shook the company president’s hand, and immediately got that job.
Not even Louis C.K. really achieved national fame until his show Louie became a critical hit on FX in 2009, more than TWENTY years after he started doing stand-up. By that time, he had already gained a reputation as the comedian with failed pilots, and sitcoms that couldn’t get past season one like St. Louie and Lucky Louie. Was the magic ingredient just dropping a word before his name for the title?
No, it just takes a really long, shitty, time to get where you want to be and you have to work at it every day. People aren’t just magically great artists, comedians, or plumbers. If today happens to be the day that you’ve decided you want to be a famous musician, then say to yourself right now, “Am I prepared for this to not happen until 2021 at the earliest, with at least 40 hours of practice per week?” Remember that year. Does 2021 sound too far away? Then you should probably pick something else. You’re only going to get it if being a musician is what you HAVE to be anyway, not what you WANT to be.
I HAVE to be a writer, because I’d write for no audience anyway, and I did that for over 10 years. Nobody read my blogs until I started putting 30 hours a week into it and actually figured out how to write. Am I prepared to look at 2021 as the earliest that I’ll start to achieve many of my goals as a writer? Yes. And it actually makes it easier in the present, because I know that this is how it’s supposed to be in the beginning. Or I could develop an Adderall addiction and cut that time in half.
Nine months ago I was writing completely for free. Today, I’m getting paid pennies for my work. That’s actually pretty cool. In less than a year, I became a “paid writer” for a sports website and I don’t even turn 29 until next week. I beat 30!
The same can be said for social situations and relationships.
I’m sure any episode of Teen Mom will enlighten you to how ridiculous we acted in our first relationships or how terrible our dates were. How many mistakes we make and how those mistakes make us better. I’ve never been married, but I take it seriously when people say “A good marriage is hard work.” Don’t take relationships lightly, as if two people just fall gently into the pillows of each other’s souls and live happily ever after.
I’m assuming that watching a young couple on a first date is one of the best people watching experiences possible, akin to watching Showgirls. A complete, wonderful disaster.
Ever go out with somebody that you had everything in common with, but the date was so bad that you decided not to see them again? Ever go out with someone that was not a good match, but took you on the most incredible ride that you did want to see them again? There’s practice in dating and practice in life, just like practice in art. No practice could equal no luck. Lots of practice, and one day you find yourself having sex with Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom.
Additionally, your mind is not much different than a car. If you keep it in the garage, never work on it, never maintain it, then it’s going to eventually stop working. Since I’ve been continually working and writing, my mind has been sharper. I’m doing things that I never thought I would do before. I thought I was a Toys ‘R Us kid, but I’ve been growing up.
Getting smarter is as much a part of growing up as forcing yourself to watch soccer since 2004 because you’re a stylish American.
Growing up isn’t just about getting older. Learning isn’t something you will only do naturally. Getting better won’t come from God-given abilities. Relationships don’t live in harmony just because you both like Foster the People.
It takes time, practice, hard work, dedication, obsessiveness, and desire. Don’t complain because you weren’t given any genetic gifts, be happy that you’re still young enough to find out what your gifts are and keep working on whatever that is until the day you die.
(Easter Eggs – There’s a reference to every Community study group member in this article. Enjoy! AND WATCH!)