Something I've been thinking about lately is how to channel vague concepts like "motivation" and "focus" into actual "routine" and "practice."
And I realize now that you kind of have to let yourself just be a freak about something.
Of course, I say "freak" with nothing but half-joking love, but I really do mean it.
I'm starting to question whether we should always frame people's accomplishments and skills through purely sanded-off positive language like "passion" and "drive" and "expertise." I think those things are definitely true, but I think that maybe a more neutral way to frame it is that those people channeled their obsessions and fixations and weren't too embarrassed to see them through.
I've been thinking about this lately in creative pursuits like writing, art, and music. But I've also been thinking about it when I go to the gym.
I've started going to the gym twice a week, 30min each, just to create a sustainable healthy habit of getting up from my desk. But many of the people in the gym around me, clearly, are pushing themselves way harder than that. They're using all these crazy machines, with the weights piled on, doing all these highly specific exercises to improve specific muscles.
Why are they doing that? Obviously it goes beyond just basic "healthy routines to stay alive." And they probably aren't paid professional athletes. They just have some sort of goal. If we wanted to be polite we'd say that they're driven and passionate, but I think it's just as fine to say that they have some sort of obsession or fixation on improving their bodies or attaining something they have in their mind.
And as long as they're not hurting themselves, that's a good thing! And I admire them for not being too embarrassed on chasing that obsession, even when other people in their lives are probably going out to the movies or staying in and watching TV. It takes obsession to practice throwing a football 30 times a day, or push yourself to hit a weightlifting goal. It's just an obsession we consider somewhat socially acceptable.
I've also been thinking about it lately in art, especially professional manga artists. Both in their comics themselves but also in their side sketchbooks and personal work, you can see an obsession with particular subjects. An obsession with drawing a particular kind of character, or outfit style, or hair style. A fixation on getting better at drawing the human form via figure drawing and then channeling that to what they want to do. Certain poses and camera angles.
Again, I know we call this "practice", but from the outside it would also be very easy to make fun of a person for being so mentally fixated on achieving a particular look, or be put off by their obsession with drawing gothic lolita dresses or whatever it is they can't stop thinking about.
Every person I know who gets good at something or keeps up dedicated practice does it because they channel that obsession and go through with it. They're not embarrassed.
For years, whenever something starts bubbling up that could be that fixation for me...I get embarrassed. I don't channel it. Because I'm afraid that someone will see something that I'm drawing over and over or writing over and over and judge me for it. That it'd be weird to design a character that I'm so passionate about drawing that it borders on obsession. That I'd look weird if I was practicing drawing skirts and dresses or scarves and sweaters or looking through fashion reference material. Or that people will see my body of work as an opportunity to look into my soul and psychoanalyze me.
I don't know why I've been thinking about this lately. Maybe I was weirdly inspired by that Pewdiepie video that went around where he spent 100 days drawing anime girls and actually got pretty good at the end. It's so stupid, but there's a real inspiration in that which makes me feel like an idiot for being too stuffy and too embarrassed to practice something 100 times. Maybe I'm inspired by the demo for Soul of Sovereignty, a game that GGDG admits is the product of their obsession over these main characters and their fashion, their designs, their dynamic with each other. An obsession that is honed passionately through dozens and dozens of sketches and illustrations. Which is the same way any good comic or game gets made.
If you wanna get good at something, and make the stuff you want to see in the world...you gotta put those hours in. And to do that...well, you gotta just let yourself be a freak a little bit. Hopefully I can give myself that permission someday.
