On the Minor Pleasures of Being a Grind

by Lael Ewy

Being neither talented nor smart, my ambitions, modest to begin with and blunted by decades of failure and disappointment, have pushed me into becoming a grind. Where others seem to take to reading or writing or math, to some sport or another, I have always had to work twice as hard for half their success. The only difference between me and those who fall behind has been the willingness to put in the work.

I say ambition, but as much it has been fear, a terror of the abjection of failure, a fear, in my case, based on hard experience. This terror often took the form of compulsion, but since that compulsion was applied to acceptable pursuits—such as academic work—it was largely overlooked by those whose joy it would have been to medicate my striving away. Played out over years, these compulsions have just become who I am, a grind.

I wake up and grind out some (generally ineffectual) exercise, grind out lesson plans, grind out graded papers. I grind out mediocre pieces of writing like this one, fueled by thousands of hours of reading because, no matter how many hours I have in, I still read slowly.

At best, I also read deliberately, not missing the nuance, maybe even forming better questions along the way. I'd like to think I feel with James Joyce, though I might be less likely to understand him as others do. I know that Emily Dickinson and I, at least in short bursts, look out at Amherst through the same set of eyes.

Knowing it will take a while, I can sit back and fall into a stately groove; it would be pointless to rush it anyway. Staring down a hundred papers to grade, I adjust my schedule, not my standards or the expectation that I might have a moment of free time after. Many of those emails didn't need answering anyway, a realization that, though I am late to it myself, many a sharper, faster worker never realizes at all.

Being a grind comes with its own sense of accomplishment, one I can't really share with others, since so much of our culture is obsessed with talent, efficiency, and speed. I can't brag that I worked 80 hours in a week since I only accomplished as much as someone working 45, but, damn it, I put the time in, didn't I?

The grind worries less about word count or chapters written and more about having engaged in the writing itself. There's a pleasure in the process, after all. I haven't gotten to the point at which writing or working or working out have become versions of a zen-like mindfulness. I have to grind out meditation, too. But I'm getting there.

I'm the opposite of this era's poster children, the ones who identify as ADHD, simultaneously set upon and lionized, claiming disability and the superpower to multitask, to livestream on YouTube while scrolling TikTok and updating Insta.

No, thanks. I'll spend the next hour writing two pages, maybe reading ten.

But maybe I'll also be able to spot the logical fallacies in some podcaster's diatribe, the wisdom of which you praise.

Just give me a minute. Maybe a day.