Consistency is a criminally underrated character trait. Sure, all the gurus and life coaches may preach responsibility, kindness, empathy, or confidence, but what no one teaches you is battle-hardened, real-life, stand-by, no-matter-what consistency. Like seriously, If I think about how many people in my life have this unique ability, outside obligations like going to work and putting food on the table, the list comes up pretty short, and I'm the exact same way. I struggle with consistency a lot in my daily life, from the minutiae to the most colossal of challenges, from staying focused on my nightly homework to maintaining connection in my relationship. It's something, a problem per-say, that I'm very hyper-aware of, one that definitely keeps me awake at night. Yet, for some reason, no one is talking about it.
I started this challenge for myself—self-indulgent literary hubris for sure—to essentially hold myself accountable to my creative pursuits every. single. day. And while you may guess that my goal is to become a better writer or hone my craft, my ultimate aim is actually much simpler: to develop a realized sense of consistency. Take a metronome, for example, the constantly beating musical time-piece. A metronome is unrelenting, unceasing, and above all, dependable. Just like a metronome always clicks on time, keeping the piece in rhythm, so will I, finding time within every day to jot some words down on a virtual page. I'm essentially trying to rewire my brain, to "callus the mind" as David Goggins would say, by applying myself wholeheartedly to perhaps the simplest task of expression.
I'm really inspired for this challenge (note the irony of being consistent to be inspired to start this challenge) by the recent pop-culture sensation Mike Winkelmann. If the name doesn't ring a bell, he's the guy who just sold his artwork for $69 million dollars on auction at Christie's. That's a lot of fucking money. Winkelmann, better known as "beeple" online is an American digital artist and also someone I truly admire. The thing is I couldn't care less about how much his artwork sold for to some Russian oligarch on a shopping spree. What intrigues me more is what the artwork actually was: a collage of over 5,000 images. OVER 5,000! Yes, beeple has been creating 1 original, unique piece of artwork, whatever it may be, every single day for the past 12 years. That is absolutely insane to me, just bonkers. And while his critics may say that naked Elon Musk, a character frequently displayed in beeple's work, or giant babies with grotesque faces don't justify the prestige of the elitist art world, it certainly raises questions about how we value creative work. For me, the "Everydays" project, as he calls it, is invaluable and inestimable, and certainly worth $69 million dollars. For me, it's as revolutionary and classic as the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre. What we have to do is redefine how we think about creative works and their function in our daily lives. Because really, how do we put a valuation on consistency? I say we start at a billion and see where the auction goes from there.
I think this is what Christie's saw in beeple's work: the chance to test the waters with a new medium and a recognized artist, and hopefully introduce the world of digital art to the "auction" people. What they got was much, much more. The buzz the sale created online is to me a resounding response, rebuke perhaps, to the conventional art forms of the past century. While NFT's may be a bubble, it is undeniable that the nature of creative work is changing forever just like NFT's completely uprooted established ideas about ownership. It's crazy to me to see blockchain technology evolving to so many industries and fields, and there's no telling just how far it could go.
This whole tangent was to say that there is some inherent beauty and bliss in dedication and passion. Time is ultimately the most valuable resource we can spend, one that we can never get back after its gone, and to see that time spent in one place day after day is literally medicine for the soul. That's what I am hopefully trying to achieve by writing something, literally anything, with my own two hands. Even at 17, I've learned that peace and purpose are hard to come by, and as the old proverb goes: "you never know what you have till it's gone". So I'll keep on writing, a blog post a day, until I find it, or at least until I get close. And even if I don't magically draw purpose from a meaningless blog post on a page no will probably ever read, I have a really good feeling about this exercise in the mundane and optimism for what skills and lessons I will learn.
I'm essentially trying to rewire my brain, to "callus the mind" as David Goggins would say.