It’s just the second step

I remember that one time a friend told me a story about his old man’s interesting interview with a company back in 1986.

The interviewer asked him this question “If your car breaks down, what is your first step?”

Let me ask you the same question: What will you do first?

Most people will answer this:

“I will check if the fuel is empty”, or “I will check if the engine check light is turned on” or “I have no idea, I probably call a mechanic first”.

My friend’s father answered with this:

“Well, if my car suddenly breaks down, I’d try to navigate my car to the side of the road and turn the emergency lights on…”

The interviewer immediately stopped him, and say “That’s the first time I ever hearing someone answered it that way”.

He simply replied “It’s obvious wasn’t it, I don’t wish to obstruct the road”.

True story, he got accepted into Shell (an O&G company based in Sarawak, Malaysia) because of that interview.

. . . . . . . . . .

It wasn’t so much of him trying to answer as specific as he could of what he would do in that situation, but its just logical and practical.

How about that. Just logical steps as it is practical.

As a young man who were impressionable, I was impressed by the story. Perhaps, that story is one of many that shapes what I believe today.

. . . . . . . . . .

Most people today have an idea what to do with their lives, without knowing the actual practical first step.

In writing, we assume that learning from Youtube and Medium is enough for us to get started. But that is just the second step.

Most writers tend to skip a step, although it does not sound that bad at all. Some of you are successful even when skipping a step. You might be the outlier.

. . . . . . . . . .

This is where I beg to differ.

I understand that some people start writing primarily because they think writing can bring them fast money. If you think that there are more successful writers than fail ones, than perhaps you are subjected to “Outlier’s bias”. This is true for every other profession too.

Most successful writers goes through struggles that we aren’t aware of. Aside from glaring talent, what differentiate them from the ones who failed?

My 2 cents, perhaps its just down to persistence and the drive to be successful in writing.
If that is true, then, the first step is to really ask ourselves why;

Why do we choose to write?
Why do we want to write?
Why do we need to write?
Why are we willing to write?

The reason why this is a very important questions to ask ourselves, is because writing is a very hard thing to pursue. The go gets harder real quick, and it can make us quit as fast in the face of challenge.

Another way of looking at it; Writing is easy to start, and is easy to quit.

Writing without anyone reading what you write is heart breaking. I should know, I am there. But this is not my first rodeo with a writing platform. I write in multiple platforms, dominantly in web3 blogging sites. It can get disheartening when no one reads what you write with heart.
Not knowing why you do this in the first place will make the journey much harder. By answering the question, you’ll get more mental clarity to your journey.

. . . . . . . . . .

Learning is just the second step, probably the ones that will get you more confused than ever. Some are doomed of repeating this step for a very long time before finding any success.

Questions like, what niche? How many should I write? Which Publication should I enlist to? Should I just use A.I? Among many other advices that you can get online. My stand on taking online advices is here: Listening to online Advices ruins me.

I guess in the end, this actually applies to everything that we do doesn’t it?

. . . . . . . . . .

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