In the last couple of years I've taken the time to look back at choices and behaviors and patterns and see how they affect what I'm doing right now. How they form the decisions and choices I make. How I interact with people. A whole bunch of shit like that. What I found was that I'm fairly wedged into my comfort zone. I have internalized a great deal of fear and that informs just about everything I do. Steven Pressfield called it Resistance. My uncle would call it laziness. But if I can call it fear then that gives me something to beat a stick at. It provides a paradigm for understanding why I've been so goddamn slow to move in any one direction. If only I had started this ten years ago I'd be so.much.farther.along by now. That applies to a photography career, love life, playing the guitar, so.many.things! I suppose if there was a roadmap to this kind of stuff the journey wouldn't be worth a damn. Some people like the answers to be in the back of the book so they don't really have to try. For me I just never really had to try that hard so I never really did. Now I'm on the verge of 50 and trying to figure out what the other 40% of my life is going to look at. I'm sure nobody is going to come along and discover me because I haven't really done anything worth discovering. It's not like I have a novel stuck in my desk drawer. I have a few pages here and there. A couple of pictures, that is. But no theme no "body of work". I wish I did. I wish I had a driving force. Maybe even a little compulsion to kickstart these things. Now here I am spraying my resume at job postings like I'm some kind of flower shooting pollen at anything it will stick to. And though it's difficult to articulate what I want, I really feel that's what I don't want. I don't want to be an engineer again. At least not the kind I was. I don't want to lay down my creative life to trade making assloads of paperwork for money. Sure it would jumpstart all the other parts of my life that have been on hold like new clothes, a place of my own, travel, adult relationships (well it may be too late for that but you get the idea). (BTW I'm writing to myself as the unknown third person so when I say you I'm flagrantly fucking up the grammar). But regardless it is definitely time to move in some kind of direction.
So as someone who prefers somewhat of a clear path over hacking through brambles, I have to break down the journey into pieces. I'm not a complex (complicated in a cautionary way, yes) person and I'm not so good at strategy. So I think the first few steps of the process (maybe even all the steps) can be the following:
- Show up
Whatever it is you want to do or might want to do, just show up to it. This is the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step thing. - Keep going
That's the only way your going to get someplace. Keep going until you figure out if you're going in a good direction. If you're not then stop and pivot. If you're not sure then keep going until you know for sure (or mostly for sure).
So, yeah, that's the thing for me. Show up, take a step or two, then keep going. You kind of really hope it's stepping in the right direction. Especially when you're burning days and each one becomes more valuable than the one before. But fear of not going in the right direction is kind of scary and sometimes the fear becomes a monster and it makes you not go or not start or whatever. It's best to just put all that meta-analysis in a duffle bag and shove it under your seat.
So now that I've written this I can get back to what I was supposed to be doing that ignored to write this. Heh, and who the hell says perpetual motion machines are the stuff of shysters.
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