from the pen of icarus blake

The problem with being an achiever is the achievements. When you’re still in school, they come at a steady clip. A on the midterm, on the term papers, in the socratic seminars, in the videogames you still have time to play, in the number of shots you down in one night and still go to your 8AM the next day. Easy, lots of achievements. Achievement burnout.

And then you enter the workforce, where you will never (ever ever ever) be rated above a C+ by management no matter how hard you try. What a terrible, awful initial shock for little Icky giving too much and getting “meets expectations” where the year before anything less than a B merited an round ass-whooping. Shame getting a PhD is so expensive (though mark my words, I will be getting that document and burning it eventually).

The real world likes making me recapitulate my goals until they make sense and lend pride really only to me. Writing 40,000 words in under 3 weeks on a fanfiction I barely intend to post, for example. However, because there is no one out there handing me gold stars for each of my fictional achievements as I intentionally slack off at my job (doing B- work according to the CEO, who likes to sit in on annual reviews and nod sagely as though he knows what I’m being graded on. Would you believe my grade jumped as soon as I stopped pulling extra weight? I digress –).

The point is that I write up a list at the end of each week of the things I’ve accomplished and give myself the metaphorical gold stars. This week, I made a supremely ugly sweater, bought groceries without going over $100, finished revising 11 chapters of Manticore, rounded up my cover artist, and started organizing for a new D&D group.

Notice how none of this shit made me any money.