Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Rachel Lucas had a post last week that I meant to mention, but I forgot about it until a few minutes ago. It's about paying dues, a summation of how hard she's worked to this point in her life and her faith that it's all going to lead to something someday -- if not something big, at least something that will make clear just why she spent so much time beating her head against the wall. I can relate to this, as is probably obvious from my blatherings here, and while I think that Rachel makes a habit of being wrong, I admire her efforts and, like her, I wish I'd started taking "dues-paying" seriously earlier in life. (Not that I'm getting old, mind you; and not that I begrudge the lessons that I needed to learn over the years. More that I wish I'd been less slow in learning them. We're not talking about designing space craft and working out their telemetry for a multi-year mission to Jupiter here, folks -- just stuff like "You need to write every day" and "The Muse hates slackers" and "You're not a college student anymore, so you need to eat something other than pizza once in a while".)

Paying dues stinks, but hopefully it all turns into admittance into The Club. Of course, it would be nice if there were some actual, definite period after which one "makes it", instead of seeing some people vault into The Club after what seems (to me) like an absurdly short apprenticeship, while I'm still plugging away...but that's not the way it is. Oh well.