There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Research
“In books, hell yeah there’s such a thing! Why are we still talking about this?”
Well, true, but I’m
not talking about how a historical fiction book might detail an entire ten-course
meal down to the prongs of each fork. I’m talking about how informing yourself too
thoroughly might cause some problems.
I like to be aware
of how hard I should expect something to be. I think this helps me to know that if the difficulty is a sign I’m going about it the wrong way, or if it is merely just that difficult. However, I think you can psyche yourself out, and there is
something to be said for walking into a situation blind.
I discuss how I
miss my younger self. I would describe her as a baby in a Looney Toons skit,
happily wandering around as anvils and toasters place an attack on her life
while she keeps on, going after whatever prize her eye is trained to. Meanwhile
the cat rushes after her, attempting to protect her from all the horrible
dangers in a state of pure panic only to end up the one who gets her teeth
knocked out. The cat is older me. Very conscious of all the things that could
go wrong, scampering around attempting to fix problems and getting hurt by things
that never even grazed me when I was oblivious to them.
Knowing something
will be hard makes it less likely that you’re going to try.
I had a good friend
in college who was very talented and very insecure. She would make statements
about the statistical likelihood of her success. She'd go and spend an hour
talking with a professor about her directing project—what should I do, how
should I do it?—guaranteeing her to get an A, but sucking all the fun out of
it. She was a realist and that set her up to not put herself out there.
She’s doing well,
graduated with a masters in her field and is working, from what I understand,
full time in the theatre. We have long since gotten out of touch. But watching
someone keep her goals low for the sake of reality taught me a valuable lesson:
shit happens without your control, and sometimes it’s positive.
You can’t expect to
be the norm. You have to hope luck and destiny will nudge you over the top.
Sure, being reasonable about your expectations is key to not getting
discouraged, helps you confront controllable problems head on and take the helm
in the situation, but it’s just as important to aim big, try for things you
might not get, and take a random stab regardless of the odds.
The harder I know
it’s going to be, the more I put it off. If I think it’ll be easy, I go big and
I rip the Band-Aid off. It’s sucks to put your all into something only to yield
nothing in return, of course, and getting out there a second or third time is
awful, especially if you’ve realized you’ve done something stupid the first go around.
There is something
to be said for doing your due-diligence before throwing yourself to the wolves,
but I find that the fear-mongering it can be much more problematic than you’d
think. Point is, if you’re looking for publishers, a career change, a
relationship, a new apartment, or basically any big time decision, the most
important part is to go for it. If you feel like all your reading is just
making you scared, remember that life is not a predictable pattern, what’s true
for the internet won’t necessarily be true for you, and you never know what
will happen.
Sometimes it’s
important to put Google down and actually live life. I’m often surprised at how
different reality is than what the realists say.
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