Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal that we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Thank you for calling Comcast. If you’d like to be placed on hold, press 1, 1, enter your phone number, then press 1, 2, 2, 1, 2. Once you are connected with your representative, please give them the phone number that you already entered, then verify the rest of your account information, so that they may instruct you to unplug your modem and plug it back in.

It’s fun to write stuff like that, to get it off your chest, to be a critic. Stupid, stupid cable companies. No one will argue with you. You may as well throw in a diatribe on traffic or the weather, and can you believe the gas prices lately? Anyone can say me too. But at some point, you have to decide who you are:

• Are you just going to be angry at them?
• Will you be the one who makes improvements from within? Maybe engineer a solution?
• Or do you see something at its core defunct and unsalvageable, and start looking where to plant the base charges?

It’s the difference between irrelevant, good, and great.

One night, as I traded sleep for worry and fear, I decided unquestionably which one I am going to be. The anxiety came from finally understanding what was required of me: destruction. I know now, it’s prerequisite to the job.