My life has, in many ways, been the pursuit of a shadow career.
A shadow career, states Steven Pressfield in his book Turning Pro, is "..a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails not real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us...We pursue callings that take us nowhere and permit ourselves to be controlled by compulsions that we cannot understand (or are not aware of) and whose outcomes serve only to keep us caged, unconscious, and going nowhere." It is, he suggests, the thing that we consciously choose to keep us from our real calling, from what he calls "Turning Pro", which (my definition) is simply committing to the calling that we feel we have on our life.
"If you're dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for. The metaphor will point you towards your true calling."
We make this exchange, posits Pressfield, by becoming addicted to lesser things. Yes, things like drug and alcohol, but by other things as well: sex, failure, distractions, money, trouble. All ways for us to short circuit ourselves instead of taking the risk of turning pro - committing ourselves - to that calling that we know we have and yet constantly try to turn our face away from because it involves too much risk or pain or embarrassment or even failure.
When I read these words they resonate with me.
What is my calling? If you asked me in my most vulnerable self, it would be a writer.
That is easy enough for me to type, and certainly costs me nothing (in theory) on virtual paper. And I can even present to myself that by writing here every day I am, in a sense doing that.
I can. But I am also using that as a crutch, an addiction and a distraction.
Posting here - while it allows me to think "out loud" and has built a solid practice of writing every day and allowed me to meet a great many wonderful people - also bears with it no risk. Most people that would reject my writing or critique it are not reading here. And even if they do, I can write that off as "angry reader" and call it good in my mind. And convince myself that I am a writer.
I am writing, but I am not a writer.
I allow other distractions to creep into my life as well, interests that suddenly pop up and are yet another rabbit hole to go charging down. There is nothing inherently wrong with learning new things; when all you do is look for the new and novel instead of improving on the interests and skills you have in hand, you are allowing yourself to become distracted. Because committing to one thing is hard.
If I focused my life down the core of what it should be, it would be God, writing and reading, Iaijutsu/Physical Training, Japanese, and the elements that make up Ichiryo Gusoku (self sufficiency where possible, sufficiency where not self -sufficient, and only enough to support myself and my family). The rest of things I have going on would largely fall by the wayside - not that they are all inherently wrong, simply that they are distractions to the better.
To Turning Pro.
This might explain (even now) my relative lack of real commitment to other things I have done to pay the bills - I do a good job, but I am not digging in to learn the materials the way I am with the items listed above (after a twenty year career in Quality, I still probably readily remember more about the Roman Empire than it). There are elements - writing documents, training, even talking to people - that approximate being a writer. Or allow a shadow career to overtake one's life.
There is one other thing Pressfield notes about the day one decides to "turn pro". Like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, one never forgets where one was the day one made that decision.
Wow. That is some deep idea... I need to dwell on that.
ReplyDeleteSTxAR - I think you are doing this as well, although you might not define it as such. You have noted how you are delving deeper and putting in more time and energy in becoming better at your machining. Same concept, different medium.
DeleteMy problem is that I feel called to do a lot of things, writing being one of them. But compared to others, I feel mediocre at best at most of them. Perhaps the only calling I've really excelled at is my love of knowledge and reading to gain more of it. I know even if I never read another book starting today, I would have read more than 99.9% of the population when I die many years from now.
ReplyDeleteI have that problem too Ed, and I do enjoy the many things I do.
DeleteLove of knowledge is a thing, a gift and talent, like anything else. It actually has a plethora of uses, if only we know how to use it aright.
All I know is that whatever I was called to do... I missed it by a country mile...
ReplyDeleteI do not know that you can say that Glen. It is just that it has not been realized yet.
DeleteTo use Pressfield's suggestion, what is your current life a metaphor for?
Recently read an article on writing. Number one by all they interviewed (all best selling authors) was a consistent routine. No one allowed to interrupted. Locked door, no phone, no doing research. That's for a different time to go down those rabbit holes but just write to your set goal. A page or five, 3 days or 7 days, a thousand words or 5 hundred. But set your goals as reasonably for your life at the present time. The other they agreed on was never stare at a blank screen. Write something, even nonsense but put some kind of words on the screen.
ReplyDeleteI dated a man who was a college professor who all he needed for his PHD for to write his thesis and whose lifelong goal after that was to be a writer. But in the 5 years I knew him he never put words on paper. He could not establish a routine and 5 years later all he had for all his education and endless research was books on how to be a writer.
You have an excellent start as your blog is one I always make sure to read as so many who write good blogs have the most fascinating minds. I'm educated every day in ways I never dreamed of.
SqueeksMom
Squeeky's Mom - Yes, what you wrote is exactly what every recommends. Write. Every day. Something. Maybe set a goal, maybe a time limit. But just write. The other - to your point - is no self criticism, no going back and redoing. Just write.
DeleteThe experience of the college professor is perhaps the one I dread more than any other: to have the desire and (perhaps) the ability, but never to do. That is what I have do, the fear I have to confront.
Thank you so much for the kind words. I do not know about a fascinating mind - I feel it is far more a disorganized jumble of multiple data streams - but if I have added something to your day or your life, my purpose with this blog is made manifest.
Your Obedient Servant, Toirdhealbheach Beucail
And as you note, just writing in your blog IS writing.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you all.
True Linda. And Scott Adams (of Dilbert Fame) would say that developing a system beats a short term goal, because a system helps you get to other goals. So in that sense, it is in win column.
DeleteI don't know if this is still true, but I heard once that 75% of college freshmen change their major at least once (I was in that statistic). I wonder if part of the problem is because our society/economy is shaped to nudge us toward business. It's difficult to find life options that barely exist because they don't fit the current mold.
ReplyDeleteI was in the same category Leigh (although interestingly, my two oldest are not).
DeleteI do think our entire society is geared towards "business", because that is seen as progressive (not in the political sense). More and more, I think finding those other life options will have to be done other ways (because ultimately, if you are not in the system you are more on your own and in some real way, less dependent).