Remember the Funny Pages? Or maybe a better question: Remember newspapers?! Don’t answer that, for the love of god.
My grandfather used to love the comic strip “Pluggers”. It is a snarky, self-deprecating peek into the life of the Plugger — broadly-brushed as “rural, blue-collar workers who live a typical working-class American lifestyle, accompanied by a mentality characteristic of the veteran and Baby Boomer generations”
Admittedly, this comic strip is not trying to speak to me as a professional, millennial woman in a metropolitan area, but I think we can all relate to the feeling of just ‘plugging along’. Sometimes it feels like we’re just going through the motions until the next milestone, promotion, degree, or whatever (!!!) and trying to balance it all as gracefully as possible without losing our shit. I’m not saying Don’t Be a Plugger because it’s a *bad* thing, my grandfather was a proud plugger and I’m barely running on coffee and a prayer today, but y’all, shouldn’t we be doing more than just ‘managing to function’?! Shouldn’t our days be more than just ‘satisfactory’? I’m not trying to get all bullshit, Pollyanna on you here — my glass isn’t half full, that thing has been broken for years and I’m drinking straight from the bottle — I just think we need to spend more time appreciating *this moment* and not waiting for the next.
Your life doesn’t start when you finish your degree or get married or get your business off the ground or your kids go off to school or you have 10k followers. You’re in it. Make the connection, publish the blog, take a leap, work to impress yourself, do work that you’re proud of and keep making ANY step toward being more than just satisfactory, no matter how small.
Y’all, I’m talking to ME here, not just you.
I’m a snarky, tired, pessimist with a bad-attitude most of the time, but I want to be proud of myself at the end of the day and not just waiting to start over tomorrow.
So, just for today:
Don’t be a plugger.