The chocolate war

Lent officially ends at sundown, at least for Catholics, and when the sun dips below the horizon I will have accomplished something I've never been able to do.

Giving up chocolate for Lent.

I've tried this before and failed miserably, since I'm a chocoholic. As a kid the nuns impressed the importance of making a sacrifice for Lent. My suggestions of giving up things like beets or broccoli just got a roll of the eyes from the good Sister, who stressed that we had to give up something we liked. The problem was that forty days without something you like sounds like an awfully long time.

Sort of like a two year contract. (You were waiting for the metaphor, right? "How is he gonna tie in chocolate rabbits to broadcasting?")

How do you get through something that seems like forever? One day at a time.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. If you look at the elephant and think it would be impossible to eat the whole thing, you have to break it down.

Instant gratification is the mantra of the young generation. You guys want things fast and furious, and start drumming your fingers if things down download quick enough. You also tend to get desperate if your career doesn't rocket up the ladder as you had planned.

One day at a time is a good way to approach a lot of things. In broadcasting, we often learn one thing at a time. We figure out how to use nat sound, master that, and then work on something else, like live shots. But we tend to get discouraged if we don't master things immediately.

Experience can't be rushed, and mastery of a process takes time. If you said to yourself, "Today I'm going to do a package that has perfect nat sound," and you'd never used nat sound before, you'd be disappointed in the results. But if you gave yourself a month to get better at it, you wouldn't have a problem. Along the way you'd learn to fade, cross-fade, write to your nat sound, etc. By the end of the month you'd have enough experience that it would become second nature to you, and you'd have mastered it.

Don't expect to turn out network quality work on your first day. Just work on getting a little better each day. All those improvements eventually add up to the point where you're doing quality work on autopilot.

Meanwhile, no post tomorrow, as it is Good Friday. Besides, I'll be in a sugar coma.