Another Way to Wake Up In the Morning
There is a fine and distinct line between professionals and amateurs and it has little to do with payment for services rendered.
Money tends to be thought of as a common distinction. I often hear the words, “I would like to do this thing professionally.” The implication being, “I’d love to do this thing if I could only get paid for it.”
If you or I are not doing something professionally, it seldom has anything to do with money. It’s rare to get money for a thing until there is real value provided for said thing. Value comes with practice. It’s not like artists or CEOs start getting paid for their work because they wake up one morning and decide, “I want to be a professional. Pay me.”
There is another way to wake up in the morning.
Wake up and decide, “I’m going to start acting like a professional.”
This means consistently doing the thing you want to get paid for whether you feel like it or not.
We get the romanticized versions of this in media.
We see the swimmer who’s up and in the water at 5:00 AM. The writer or composer spending all night on the magnum opus. The person who practices guitar to the point of bleeding fingers. The dancer in the studio for four hours a day. The CEO studying the industry and spotting the trends.
TV, movies, and YouTube make it seem like these people always feel like getting up at 5:00 AM to make the magic happen every day. We don’t see the days when they don’t feel like it. No one films that. It’s far less inspiring. But it’s far more the reality.
I didn’t feel like writing this morning. And I don’t get a dime from this blog.
But I’m a writer. So I wrote anyway.
A professional sets a schedule to consistently focus on their craft and keeps that schedule whether she feels like it or not.
