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There's no shortcuts, you have to take your own journey

07 Apr 2020

Interestingly, Stephen King wrote a book called on writing in which he spends half of the pages talking about how he became a writer. Only thenceforth does he spend the other half to articulate what is good writing.

I think that's beautiful, and this can be generalized to any other life learnings: you can read all you want, and you can seek to avoid mistakes that others have made by researching from their writings, and you can try to absorb what they instruct, but at some point you will always recognize that there's only so much education you can draw from paper. To internalize a character you'll have to make the misstep, and you'll have to go on your own hike, there are no shortcuts.

The only thing you can extort from these people's many life lessons is inspiration and the motivation to step into your own edifying journey. For instance, I've gathered many advice about the power of habits, but only now, now that I am overpowered by too much work and deadlines and promises I've made, only now do I feel contrived to build habits.