CAREER DEATH SPIRAL?
We can fool ourselves for a long time on the soul-sucking hamster wheel of shiny awards and sports car payments. Then something happens, or it doesn’t.
IT’S ALL ABOUT STRESS:
Failure to thrive as an adult must be our own fault because we hate ourselves or need to control rage, fatigue, and dysfunctional relationships. People sign up for the likes of coding classes in the hopes of staying relevant.
PATH TO CREATIVITY:
Follow your passion and blah blah blah. Yeah, right, tell that to the single mother trying to make rent payments. Talk about first world problems. Just stop. Stop distracting yourself with career panels, self-improvement books and meet-ups.
OPRAH HAD A POINT:
If you are lucky you will have an Oprah Ah Ha Moment and realize it really is true, life IS short. Which direction do you want to take for the rest of your life? Good for you, you finished grad school, supported yourself, kept bucks in a savings account, kept a roof over your head, had children or didn’t have children. That was then, this is now.
EMBRACE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES:
Time to collect your reward. It’s called Freedom! How you got there doesn’t matter. Maybe you are unemployed, on sabatical, married rich, got a sweet house-sitting gig, retired, quit or got fired. No matter because you’re free. It’s your turn. It might take you a while to give yourself permission to do whatever the heck you want to (legal of course).
Buy that comfy Barcalounger and binge watch films, call old friends, take a road trip, print up old photos or learn meditation. It’s easy to overanalyze. You don’t need to rationalize your whimsical path to creativity.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:
Hugh Hefner took a spin on the wheel of fortune, changing the cultural landscape and making it acceptable to wear PJs with a smoking jacket. October 2015 the big wheel moved a notch as Playboy Magazine announced “no more nudes”. Finally people everywhere could honestly tell their partner they read Playboy for the articles.
Perhaps as a child you found dad’s secret Playboy stash in the basement and turned them into coloring books. Not that I did that.
In truth, Playboy really does have great articles. Here’s a bit of reporter David Sheff’s interview with the 1986 Steve Jobs.
“It’s often the same with any new, revolutionary thing. People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. It’s a rare person who etches grooves that are other than a specific way of looking at things, a specific way of questioning things. It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing. Of course, there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they’re rare.”
GROOVY
