“Kenichi” is Helping Me Pass University

Let’s try writing a journal post like I’m Cole, okay? Okay.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that I’m a pretty lazy person (You might notice that this article went up a little late. Yeah.) and from time to time it’s hard for me to find sources of motivation in everyday things like, say, not failing out of university. You know, hypothetically.

Which is why it was nice when I began watching Kenichi and realized that I felt a desire to do…stuff. I gave an hour long lecture today on a book I hated. Is Kenichi entirely to blame for that? Probably not. But let’s entertain the thought that it is for a second because that makes for a more interesting article.

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What’s inspiring to me about the show isn’t that Kenichi succeeds, or that he’s constantly improving, or even that he’s able to get the shit kicked out of him on a regular basis and continue to get up over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, all of those things are (probably) very inspirational to someone out there, it just doesn’t do it for me. What’s great about Kenichi as a character is that day in and day out he does something that sucks because it’s necessary.
I cracked a joke about failing out of university, but the truth is that due to, among other things, severe motivation issues, I’m in the process of making my way through university for the second time. It’s hard for me to invest the time and effort into something that feels like it’s not worth my while. And when you’re dealing with a complex cocktail of emotions the number of things that feel worthwhile get less and less.
And I’m not better. Like, I’m better, but I’m not better, you know? I feel like I’m perched right on the edge of falling right back into my old habits of saying ‘fuck it’ and wasting the afternoon on reddit instead of writing an essay that’s worth 40% of my grade.
So watching Kenichi (and rest assured that I’m only watching it when I have spare time) is actually kind of helpful to me. Kenichi wants to skip to the end. He wants to be better than his masters so that he can protect those around him. He doesn’t want to have to do fifteen thousand pushups or whatever. Training sucks. It’s hard. It hurts. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like what you’re doing is congruent with where you see yourself going in the future.
But you know what? You do it anyway. Because it’s necessary. If the road to success was all fun and sunshine and rainbows there would be a lot more successful people in the world. And no, I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself successful, but I feel like I’m taking the first positive steps down that road. Certainly the first steps that I’ve taken in that direction in a long time. And in part I have Kenichi to thank for that.
Find your motivation where you need to find it.