“Time is precious”. These were the first words spoken to me in a recent, and notably insightful, conversation. The first post I ever made on this site, which is almost embarrassingly recent in terms of volume, was about the importance of giving one’s aspirational vision a concrete and immediately actionable form. The question I lacked the capacity to address then is, not only what I can do now, but what I should do first. Once movement to action is squarely in the realm of the achievable, a more nuanced consideration of sequencing enters the foreground. I’ve spent most of the past few years billing myself as a kind of experience collector in pursuit of a vague set of skills and or experiences which will fuel my journey to more ultimate aspirations. The mistake in this approach is that somewhere along the way, I ended up not on this journey at all, but instead on a digressive and light-hearted sojourn embarked upon under the dubious pretext of preparation. 

Preparation is not a special ingredient that needs to be pursued individually; it's an ever-present constant. Each moment in life prepares us for the next, should we be willing to accept its lessons. My companion in the aforementioned conversation elucidated this nuance to me when pushing back on my espoused narrative. I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something to the effect of “you’re either doing the thing or you’re not”, noting that the only way to gain the seemingly prerequisite experience to some pursuit is not in a classroom or training hall, but through pursuing the item of intended effectuation itself. To distill this a bit: the relationship between experience and action is not some kind of chicken-or-the-egg problem; action most certainly comes first – action, more specifically, not in pursuit of experience but in pursuit of its end. 

Which brings me to the last key point and takeaway from this little enlightenment: to pursue a vision, you have to live inside of it. I realise that’s probably a bit self-evident, but I think most can admit it's not exactly an easy thing to do. I idolise this imaginary state where my thinking is entirely enveloped by the problem I hope to solve and the vision that I wish to employ in structuring the solution. I’m sure I’ll eventually write here about how this idealised state is a kind of false flag obscuring the underlying diligence required to walk any path in earnest, but in the meantime, I’d like to further surround myself not necessarily with the space I wish to be in but with the action that will take me there; to further embrace doing as a mechanism of preparation in and of itself.