You Don’t Have to Justify Anything

Here is one secret for not quitting: don’t bother to justify anything to other people–or even to yourself–especially when you are first getting started. If you find something absorbing, curious, compelling, interesting, fun or you just can’t let it go, that’s a good enough reason to carry on. You don’t have to explain why. You don’t have to know how it’s going to pan out. If you knew, it probably wouldn’t be worth pursuing. Eventually you will find a way to explain or reframe what you’ve been up to, and then people can decide for themselves if it was worth it.

“I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.”
——Emerson, “Self-Reliance”