Sometimes, staying motivated is a slippery slope. Well, maybe slippery is not the right word. Often, I feel like Sisyphus. I spend all day pushing an incredibly heavy and unwieldy boulder up the hill, only to find that when I wake up the next morning, I’ve got to do it all over again. Of course, the boulder represents my attitude, outlook on life, likelihood of ever laughing or grinning again, my sense of creative worth and meaningfulness to the rest of existence. The hill is the y-axis representing the challenges of work, finances, interpersonal relationships, endless to-do lists and tasks from unfinished projects, unfulfilled longings, bitter memories, and the general malaise suffered by those who look out at the world and see very few indications that it was designed with them in mind.
But it was never supposed to be easy. They say that the genius in us takes care of the genius in us, but whoever said that was probably safely assuming they themselves were not a genius. In fact, it takes a special kind of not special to assume that the world is somebody’s oyster. It may be an oyster, but genius is the grain of sand that gives that world such an intense kind of irritation that it is forced to create a pearl to enbalm the wound – an end result that someone, somewhere, is willing to rip out to make a profit from, regardless of whether the world survive the process. And then the profiteer will likely have the gall to complain that the genius was gone too soon, ahead of their time, so young, long before they could be more fully exploited and drained of whatever lifeforce gave them any purpose whatsoever.
© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
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