I, like you, have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it is I love doing. It sounds simple, but if you have ever been faced with wanting a change, you know how hard it can be.
We start when we are kids. We want to be doctors and lawyers because our parents tell us we want to be doctors and lawyers. Secretly we want to be superheroes, or wild animals or something. Then later in life we keep with the former bit of reasoning and lose the latter.
In our late teens we are all going to be millionaires by being so super awesome. I don't like writing about teenagers, they are belligerent and useless. So after that we reach our our early twenties. Here it really starts to happen. Most of us realize we don't want to be doctors or lawyers or insert here whatever your parents said you should be. Most of us don't have the grades or means either. What we don't realize then is that most of us are really lucky for it.
Logically this would then be the time we start searching, but we don't. We tend to sort of fall into something. As an example, I just sort of fell into advertising. I liked drawing, so hey, graphic designer right? Turns out no, not right. I studied that, did alright, but knew that I secretly hated it.
Next, perhaps as a method of avoiding actually working in the field, I got myself into lecturing. First as a guest lecturer, and then full time. Then the college closed. This is a good example because that's sort of life, that's what happens when you only half build a life, one that still relies on something external over which you have less than no control.
Anyway, so we all go through some version of this, next we try to fall into a similar industry, because, you know, now this is all we know, and we are used to getting paid, and we reckon this one thing is all we can do. Now you have a career. You didn't choose this career, it just sort of happened.
You spend the next five or so years blindly following this path. Well it could be a lot more or a lot less, but we just sort of go along with it. This is life now. And then the storms hit. You start to sabotage yourself. Subtly at first, like you'll go out and get wasted on a week night. You suddenly 'won't be able' to do certain tasks, particular those involving work. All you can do now is the very least, and progressively, even less than that. You will get mad at people's faces. You will start complaining about not being able to do junk you damn well know you wouldn't want to be doing anyway, like the old 'I want to jog but work has me too tired'.
In whatever way or form, this resentment will build. Some people do this their entire lives. Some of us lose it. This is where we self destruct. Big and loud. I have mentioned before that I think self destruction is a misunderstood creature. This is because we believe it's bad, and we do not connect the dots leading up to it.
Think of it this way. If a person is actually happy and fulfilled, would they blow it all up? The answer is a flat no, if that one is tripping you up. We destroy ourselves because we need to, because we can't live the life we are living anymore.
So to get back on topic, everyone will go through a few of these blow ups, at least. When you do, understand what the actual you, the more intelligent internal self, is trying to tell you, the walking breathing idiot. Odds are that you won't, not the first couple of times at least.
You will in all likelihood end up building something not to dissimilar to what you had before, or even worse, try to mend your previous situation. This is because of a misunderstanding caused by years of poor communication between you and yourself.
You still at this point don't know what it is you actually want.
How do you figure this out? I am going to talk about this some more in my next post, but a lot of it involves separating 'you' from the narrative that is 'your role'. But rather than address the process here tonight, I am going to talk about what I love. I think that the general train of thought behind it better articulates the point in any case.
I love to write. I didn't always know this. I did always love to read, but since my early life I was enamored with the arts. Later in life, my ego hijacked this interest, and foolishly had me thinking I wanted to be in the music industry. I tried starting bands, I played guitar, I spoke about it the way any obnoxious self righteous idiot who wants to be appreciated for being an artist, rather than actually just being an artist, does (See: First year fine art or drama students).
Where it all sort of fell apart for Mr. Ego was in the fact that I am terrified of crowds, groups, or sometimes even just a single person I feel is being to observant*
*This wasn't the case while lecturing though, for some reason having control over a large group's grades somehow diminishes the intimidation one experiences. Funny how that works.
So while working and sort of doing the whole 'Falling into it' career thing, I thought I had an interest in photography. Scratch that. I did, and still do. It took me a while however to figure out that what I had no interest in was being a photographer. Studying photography was a great help in realizing this. I wanted to be like Claire from Six Feet Under and take morose images juxtaposing the world with some deeper pseudo-intellectual existentialist melancholy. Whatever.
What I didn't want to do was take photos of people getting married. That is the majority of the industry, and the few alternatives didn't appeal either. I rarely take photos of my kid, why the hell would you think I want to take any of yours? Oh, you will pay me? Soul sucking void of meaninglessness and death of purpose here I come again, baited by the prospect of being paid... You get me every time you sinister little pieces of paper.
Another passion I have always had is visual art, but to quote a younger and far more abrasive me, 'Visual art is dead'. It isn't literally dead, but success at it falls in line with any sort of 'fame' based work. Its a competition with millions of other really talented people, and at the end of the day you all lose because some fool's pet monkey pooped on a canvas and its won the new artist spot. That is only sort of a joke, the art world really is like that. Talent and skill mean little. Right place right time means everything.
Defecating monkeys aside, the other reason art wasn't for me is because I can't 'produce' it, so to speak, it's an emotional thing for me, and largely a darker side of myself, and I feel this may be the case for many of us who have thought along those lines.
Through all these adventures, I had always been writing though. I started a lot of books. Not so much did I finished a lot of books. I have written tons of stuff, poetry, short stories, journals, song lyrics, i had boxes of just written junk. Never once did I seriously think 'hey, I want to be a writer'. I wrote because I loved it. And after many years, and a lot of failing at other junk, the light bulb did finally, and oh so cartoonishly, appear floating above mine head...
I still have to do other work to live at the moment, but it's nothing I hate, and the I have my target...
Thanks for reading.
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