Talking and doing

Have you noticed that people who talk about doing something are rarely the people who do it?

For example, a friend of mine from many years ago would always talk very enthusiastically about these fantastically promising schemes he had cooked up which would make him rich. None of them ever can more than three feet away from the launch pad, and I'm sure none of them have yet. (One of them was apparently a shop selling door handles...)

But people I know who are successful, are people who just quietly put in a ton of energy and hours on something, it builds up and it works. When they talk, they talk about hobbies or movies or whatever.

Perhaps a very typical example is writing a novel. It's something that many dream about, but it's much harder than they think. And the guy who actually is producing a novel two thousand words per day, day in day out, is not the guy who will fill your ears about the great novel he will write. The guy who does that is the dreamer.

Perhaps it is because talking about something is a peripheral activity. And when you are somehow blocked from the central activity, you'll be pushed out into peripheral activities. For instance, in periods where I'm not very productive photographically, I'm obsessing about cameras. When I'm actually photographing, I'm not very concerned with them, I just use the one I have.