Dear reader(s),
I’m fond of the expression “Once you’re 90% of the way done, there’s only the other 90%.” This is because, as a writer, I must be bad at math in order for the cosmic balance to be maintained, for the same reason that Ryan Reynolds must secretly have something wrong with him, I don’t know. Maybe he likes bread-and-butter pickles. Something.
It’s also because, as it turns out, doing things is harder than you’d think. What kinds of things? Most of them, as it turns out.
However! There is also a cosmic balance in the difficulty of things, in that for every hard thing, there must also be a corresponding easy thing. However! This is less helpful than you might think. I’ve come up with some examples:
Hard: Getting out of bed early in the morning.
Easy: Staying up late, playing Nintendo and drinking beer.
Hard: Going to bed and falling asleep at a reasonable hour.
Easy: Staying up late, playing Nintendo and drinking beer.
Hard: Adulting.
Easy: 40-Something Man-Childing.
Hard: Not eating McNuggets every time you start to feel feelings.
Easy: Drowning your sorrows in Hot Mustard.
Hard: Proofreading.
Easy: Eh, they’ll think it was a stylistic choice. I’m being colloquial, ok? Do you always not repeat the same phrasing in multiple concurrent, uh, phrases? I’m an artist so please let me art.
Hard: Pulling coaxial cable through a relatively small hole in what is hopefully not a load-bearing component of your house so that you can also drill another small hole at the other end to hook your TV up to a digital antenna functionally equivalent to the analog antenna our forebears used in Olden Times in the Late 1900s and said many bad words about before the convenience of cable TV so you can go through the joy of trying to get a clear enough signal to watch the Pats during inclement weather which thankfully never happens in New England, all to avoid paying the cable company an additional $7.49 over the $800 monthly fee they charge you for internet service that rivals the lightning speeds of a 14,400-baud modem.
Easy: Inhaling great horking wads of insulation that are probably not asbestos, but definitely contain lead.
Hard: Doing your actual paying job for which you have worked very hard and spent a lot of money and time getting a graduate degree to be remotely qualified and which 9 out of 10 recent grads would literally punch Ryan Reynolds in the spleen while saying “you’re probably not even that nice in real life” to just get like a chance to do, if you can imagine.
Easy: Staying up late, playing Nintendo and drinking beer.
Hard: Editing this list down. Honestly, everybody’s given up reading at this point, dude.
Easy: It’s my blog and I do what I want. Besides, these are all comedy gold! The next two are genius!!
Hard: Finding a photo that compliments the feeling and atmosphere of the corresponding written work without being obvious, boring, or spoiling any details of the story.
Easy: Finding a blurry photo of a squirrel and mashing every slider to either +100 or -100 without really knowing exactly what the difference is between Brightness and Exposure and Brilliance, but making sure that Saturation is definitely at +100 so that squirrel glows like a black-light poster unless you want it to be moody and dramatic in which case Saturation is at -100 and then Contrast and Black Point are both at +100 and also maybe add a vignette and crop it at a weird angle.
Hard: Developing a cohesive plot structure with authentic characters in a believable yet unique world, then writing the damn thing down somewhere.
Easy: Developing some vague ideas and “like, a cool setting, in space, but it’s cowboys, but not like Firefly, more like a remake of Seven Samurai oh wait that’s been done, ok, but not with a horse that’s an AI” that “Netflix would totally turn into the next Stranger Things” and “pay us enough money to never have to write anything else again.”
Hard: Coming up with a Commentary essay for the blog the night before it’s due, when you’re tired and just want to stay up all night and play Nintendo.
Easy: Drinking beer while writing it.
—jr
P.S. Why not check out some of these other “easy” works of literary excellence?
Truth is easy. This post proves it.
“Easy: It’s my blog and I do what I want. Besides, these are all comedy gold! The next two are genius!!”