When my niece was about four, she grew frustrated in the middle of trying to write something.

“This is the [most] tewwible W I’ve evew seen!” she said angrily, shoving her paper across the table.

I felt bad for thinking about how cute she was. Of course I knew just how she felt. I’ve had my own version of “This is the tewwible W I’ve evew seen.”

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Tracing the journey of people who have become wildly successful on YouTube, it seems inevitable that they were going to make it.

This is a classic case of confirmation bias, because nobody’s paying attention to all of the creators who didn’t make it.

Then again, who is the judge of whether creators didn’t make it?

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Sometimes, the emotional weight of what we’re trying to do is too heavy.

We might be burdened by the shame of past failures.

We might have waited so long to do the thing that now it feels like too big a deal.

We might be scared of what will happen after we do the thing.

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Over the holidays, a family member mentioned that he’s been learning to play guitar.

Or, he had been learning, but it turned out to be more difficult than he had thought, so he gave up in frustration.

He used an app that showed the sequence of notes to play as the recording of a given song played in the background. The notation moved along, conveyor-belt style, sort of like the game Guitar Hero.

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I’ve noticed that hurrying is a habit.

There’s a comfortable walking pace — and then there’s the faster, “I’m either running late or being chased by someone” version.

There’s a comfortable driving speed, and then there’s following the car in front of you too closely, running yellow lights, and drumming your fingers on the steering wheel impatiently whenever you happen to be stopped.

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