Love is for the ones who love the work.

The title of this post comes from the last line of Joseph Fasano's poem "For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper", but to me, it encompasses so much more than that. For people have always yearned for an easier way—to fudge the numbers, or to outright cheat. At times, there's a valid strategy here. Many things in life are not worth putting 100% of your effort into, and knowing when to go all gas no brakes is sacred wisdom. There are people who work hard their entire lives and have nothing to show for it because of the unlucky alignment of where that energy is focused and channelled. But far more often, people yearn. There are dreams and written goals and recurring thoughts of taking action, but then something else happens. A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. I write this as somebody who is often remarked upon for my writing cadence and consistency. Sometimes, people ask how they can emulate what I do—they ask what the magic is to replicate my output.…