I don’t believe that anything worth doing is difficult. It’s easy to lay in the sun, to listen to birdsong, to bask in the presence of a loved one. But I also believe that a great many things that are difficult are worth doing despite, and in fact because of, their difficulty.

I know I’m not alone in this. It keeps coming up in discussions of AI, or in media consumption, or in reading articles versus absorbing news via social media. All of these things are, to me, true—often, the experience is the point. It is important for me to struggle through learning a task rather than having it done for me. It is important for me to sometimes struggle to work through a book or film or game rather than only read/watch/play things that are easy. It is important for me to work through the news myself, not just have it regurgitated to me in bite-size snippets devoid of context.

I want to know things, and I want to know them well. I want to learn to do so many different kinds of crafts that I can’t possibly have the time to do. That means struggling through the difficult parts—the parts where everything I do is bad or ugly or frustrating. There are at least 50 episodes of my podcast where I did this publicly, learning criticism as I went. There are uncountable unpublished stories I struggled through to get where I am now. To bypass the work is unthinkable to me.

This isn’t just a craft issue. I am also the person I am now because I have grappled with the difficult work of confronting myself, which includes my good traits and my bad ones, and figuring out which are which. My insecurities sometimes lead me to be cold. My passions sometimes lead me to be overbearing. Learning these things is difficult, worthy work. Changing them—not always, but sometimes—is harder still. I’ve compared the work of changing the way I think about myself to walking brazenly through a tangled thatch of weeds. It would be easier to go around. It would be easier to take the path. But I have to push through, and each time I do it, it becomes easier. Not without difficulty, just easier. I am wearing down a little path in my mind until it, too, becomes second-nature.

If I could have zapped myself with a magic wand into having any one of my skills or thinking about myself as a worthwhile person, I wonder if I would feel as strongly about those things. It’s easy to imagine that the people we interact with or that we see in the world or online have always been the way that they are. I know that isn’t true for me because I saw and felt the work, the labor, that went into each step. (I also struggle to see my skills the way others do, but that’s beside the point.)

I came back from vacation with three new records to add to my collection, and a friend asked me if, when I go into a record store, I do so with a list or just shop based on vibes. The answer is a list: one I add to often, and subtract from only occasionally, as the things I want aren’t always available. Why don’t I just order them online, if finding them can be so difficult? Well, the finding is the point. A collection, to me, is unsatisfying if I just buy it online. Each record bought in a shop I’ve never visited before is itself a memory. The Format record I bought in the band’s hometown Phoenix when visiting for their first real live performance in almost 20 years is not just The Format record; it’s also that trip, the rain that fell in dizzying sheets, the rumble of thunder as we weaved around puddles on our way to the venue. The songs on it are the songs I heard in high school and beyond, but they are also the songs I heard that night, and the songs contained on the record proudly displayed in a downtown Phoenix record store. Ordering it online, however it might have satisfied my urge to have the record, wouldn’t have the same effect—especially because I’ve been unsuccessfully searching for “Dog Problems” for years.

“I don’t dream of labor,” is a common phrase. I get the sentiment. But I do dream of labor; labor that is rewarding, worthy, dignified, helpful, enriching. It’s a tragedy of our culture that so much labor does not meet those qualifications.

In short: difficulty is worth it, sometimes and even often. Take the long path. Bring a machete. But also, luxuriate in the results. You earned them, however small they may be.

Paroxysm Volume 5 is live on Kickstarter! Back it for a ghost story by yours truly, plus a bunch of incredible spooky art but a bunch of amazing folks.