Sometimes on the Web I happen to read success stories of people who go on and on talking about their achievements. By comparing these kinds of stories, one can see that these people, from the business executive to the blogger, all have been able to identify what drives them, focus on it, obsess over it, and that has essentially been the key to their success.

I’m not here to deny that or to prove that wrong. It’s not wrong and those people aren’t lying or embellishing things up — in most cases, their success is quite evident. However, I’m afraid there are a couple of things those who read such success stories often misunderstand. The first thing people tend to believe is that such success stories are the norm, so that it’s enough to follow their recipe to achieve similar results. (Sounds naïve, right? You have no idea how many believe that. Even I believed that some time ago.)

The second thing people tend to believe from those success stories is that it all stems from a 2‑step process:

1. Work hard, doing what you love, obsessing over what you’re most passionate about.
2. Success.

I’m afraid that, unless you’re extremely lucky, “Success” is definitely a Step 3, and there’s going to be a Step 2 before, and that Step 2 is probably the worst son of a bitch you’ll meet in your path. In fact, for some people, it may never come. I for one am still at Step 1. I’ve been at Step 1 for a long time, actually.

And Step 1 is important, fundamental: if you want to get somewhere, you have to work hard, there’s no way around it. But other people’s success stories, I think, are distracting and misleading. A part of you is somehow unconsciously tricked into thinking that it’s going to be easy. That guy just broke some eggs in a saucepan and got the perfect omelette, you may think. And when you do the same and you won’t get the perfect omelette, you may feel a little lost. And disappointed. Of course it’s a metaphor, and maybe not even a good one at that. The gist of it is that a recipe isn’t something written in stone that will guarantee a decent result. It’s more like a detailed guide to get from point A to point B but, like a physical map, it won’t tell you anything about the (possibly many) variables you’ll encounter on your path.

My personal Catch-22

Plainly put, and without taking into account many other things that interest me and I enjoy doing, what I love is writing. Writing here, about technology, design, usability and environs; but most of all I love writing poetry and fiction. Over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of material, mostly in Italian but also in English (especially my recent production). A large part of my œuvre is unpublished, but especially during the 1990s I performed a fair amount of readings and my pieces were powerful enough to attract a small, faithful audience. I submitted some writings to the criticism of a few literature professors at the university I attended, and the general consensus was that I was a promising author (the most direct comment I received was You’re on the right track). So, by combining all these elements, plus the few things I have actually published, plus the fact that I’ve been writing ‘seriously’ since 1987, plus the fact that I am my hardest, strictest critic — well, I feel I have earned the right to call myself a Writer.

Life though, being life, has decided that to earn a living I had to do something else. So I am a translator. Translating is something I like to do, but I can’t honestly say I love it as much as writing. My life is divided between these two strong forces: writing and translating. My ultimate goal is to eliminate the translating part (at least for work) and spend my days doing what I truly madly deeply love — writing. So where is the Catch-22? My Catch-22 is this: to be able to truly shine at what I do best (writing), I have to devote “vast, unbroken slabs of time” ^[1] to it. I cannot do that, at present, because I need that time to do the other thing (translating), which I have to do if I want to earn some money.

Having less time to do what you love sucks like a billion vacuum cleaners. Having less time to do what you love means lots of abandoned projects, ideas that take an unnecessarily long time to properly develop, much fewer updates to this website than I’d like, and so on and so forth. It’s a very frustrating situation and one that can’t be readily solved in practice. I know what you’re thinking: If writing is what you love most, you should drop everything and write and write and do everything in your power to make your stories and your poems known to the public.

I would gladly take a sabbatical, shut out everything else, and give all of my energies and attention and dedication to writing — if only could I afford it. But I haven’t got any savings that would sustain me for an indefinite time interval, and in the translation business (like many other freelance jobs) you just can’t say to a client “I’m leaving for a while, but we can continue our collaboration whenever I return”: they will find someone else and you will have to find other clients and, despite your reputation, it will be hard.

I know what you’re thinking now: If writing is what you love most, what you care most for, you shall have to take that risk. I absolutely agree, provided you will pay my bills and debts while I’m away, creating new amazing stuff.

Living (in) the balance

I’m trying to do both things, despite their mutual interferences. I’m trying to finish a novel and a few short stories to finally self-publish an eBook. I’m trying to publish interesting, non-banal stuff here in my website (and in two languages, in case you didn’t notice), hoping that someday I’ll be able to devote all my energies to writing and tech-writing. What you can do is give me a little help: if you like what you see here, if you like the idea that I could provide more interesting and original content more frequently if I had more time, some little things you could do for me are:

1. Donate (whatever amount you feel);
2. Use the Readability tools you see on every article page in my site (that “Read Now | Later | Send to Kindle” widget you see above the article’s title). By clicking on one of those buttons you ensure that a small amount of money comes to me;
3. Spread the word. Positive feedback and word of mouth can be extremely beneficial. If I see something worth linking, I link to it. If you see something here that’s worth linking, please do the same. Mention it in your blog, tumblelog, what have you; tweet or retweet it, use the social network of your choice. Sharing is rather effortless nowadays.

In the meantime, thank you all very much for listening. I had to get this out of my system.