Grit

As I was trying to create this blog, I happened to update the Gatsby-Cli (an NPM package used to develop this static websites..) and find myself in a two hours focus on eating peanuts while trying to learn how package version works..

I’m a huge Michael Jordan fan growing up and still is in the basketball world as he embodies a lot of what an overly obsessed multi-talented leader and was able to do so much for the Chicago Bulls and fans all over the world because of his insane focus and hardwork. I got hooked to basketball because of him even if the sport is considered a religion in the Philippines which locals invest a lot of time playing and watching. Almost always there is a basketball court in beside every church in every town our country - partly its because of politicians investing in these projects but I believe its us locals tend to patronize the sport more as we ought to incorporate it in our lives after the Marcos regime.

Enter MJ’s biggest fan - Kobe Bryant. He was a kid when MJ is at his prime, yet he was able get enough confidence to try and compete at his level. He studied real hard how he moves as seen in this video. Though he was not able to achieve some of MJ’s accomplishments, Kobe on his own became a legend in his 20 years as a Laker.

Kobe is the best example of how grit can transform a young kid that can compete with the greats like MJ, making small people look giants in the face of adversity. I kind of have a bit of grit in me but its more on a different base layer I guess, leaning on persevering on the hard stuff because I’m overly grateful of being alive and able to think, sketch, write and code my ideas for the world to read.

Just like the problem that I have encountered earlier, coding websites have tons of nuisances and abstractions along the way that I’m trying to navigate. It is becoming more frequent to be honest especially that my volunteering project to upgrade the Cayman Eco website requires a ton of new technological integration - gatsby, graphql, github to name a few which are all newly created open source projects which relates to less available resource materials and configurations may have tons of bugs - of which I encountered last week and now as I write for this separate code base. I forced myself to write something important and dense today, kind of out pushing for developing the habit of writing for the past two weeks since my experiments on new habits - which affects my time alloted to developing the skill of writing.

The average person will define my ideas insane. I define it myself as stoic controllable actions - Grit fits the bill. Grit is something I am constantly trying to improve - spreading it in a lot of my habits, making the fortitude muscle in my brain fire and connect more neurons that will fight any kind of barrier or absurdity that I may end up facing. The mental muscle is worth reinforcing - especially nowadays that most get lost in the hyperconnected social media storms, brains getting eaten by instant notifications and impossible to achieve social norms. Developing one’s grit is highly recommended.