Working At Living

In my last post I said I wanted to start applying the knowledge I’ve learnt to my own life and start living it which replicates my mantra of working at living what you have learnt through play. To get the ball rolling on this though, I thought it would be best to reflect way back…

In my last post I said I wanted to start applying the knowledge I’ve learnt to my own life and start living it which replicates my mantra of working at living what you have learnt through play. To get the ball rolling on this though, I thought it would be best to reflect way back to the origins of my journey, at the point when I set a lot of intentions and asked a lot of questions of what I wanted out of my life.

What Do I Want?

In reviewing posts back between 2005 and 2007, I noticed that I wasn’t really happy with my life. Not only was I unhappy with the way work worked but I also felt like most jobs really couldn’t encompass all that I wanted to express of myself. Because of this, I said things like “I’m dying to feel alive“, “I want to feel connected“, and “I want to be real creative“. In effect, I felt like a piece of machinery in a lot of my jobs, rather than a human being. Instead I wanted my work to feel like home for me, I place where I was accepted fully as I am, with the ability to express all that I am.

Now that’s what I was feeling at the time. What have I learnt today that applies to this and have I made any head way? Interestingly enough, what I’m realizing right now in this very moment is that, if anything, all I’ve done is improved my ability to articulate what I meant by this. Today I realize that what I want is to integrate my life. I no longer want to try to find a job that can express all that I am because I know now that’s impossible. Instead I want to do work that resonates and expresses all of the diverse aspects of who I am as a whole and collectively unifies and defines the narrative of my life which is often more commonly know as your passion.

What Have I Achieved?

But again, here’s the thing. Even though I’m much more capable at understanding and articulating what I wanted back then, have I really moved any closer to achieving what I wanted? Again, in all honesty, no. If anything, I’ve gone off on a tangent and wanted to “get a job” being an organization consultant or a change agent. In effect, to ask the same question of myself, would a job of that nature express all that I am? No, it wouldn’t. It would definitely express a much deeper aspect of myself but no, it wouldn’t express all that I am.

Weaving My Life

I remember saying way back that when you fully understand your passion and purpose in your life, it would weave all of the knowledge you’ve acquired throughout your life, no matter how marginal, and it would integrate it together eventually allowing your work to just be you living your life (so much so that it doesn’t seem like work). This is why people who often have reached this point in their life say that they can’t believe their getting paid to do what they love because they’d still do it regardless of getting paid for it.

A couple of quick examples of this off the top of my head are restaurant reviews and product reviews. I’ve noticed over my life that I have this knack for perceiving often intangible things that when I later articulate them to others, they often are surprised by how poignant and correct I am on my perception of them. For example, I love discovering new restaurants and taking photos of both the food and decor, as I talk with my wife about the qualities that make it so unique in terms of its identity. In addition, I seem quite adept at analyzing and synthesizing reviews of products, often relaying seemingly intangible yet important things to friends and family that often aren’t seen in mainstream reviews.

What I’m trying to get at here is that I am doing many different things in my life already that I just naturally do without even thinking about. The thing is though is that I’m missing the obvious next step of taking the opportunity to sustain myself with these natural activities, enabling them to become a part of my life’s work. Again in doing so, I’m not only able to express all that I am naturally but in doing so, I’m able to make my life my work and sustain myself by just living it. In effect, I’m working on designing my own life, creatively integrating playing, learning, and working into it in a way that resonates with my own values and beliefs.

There are many other things as well. For example, while I’m not doing desktop computer support work anymore, I love mobile devices like the iPad and love sharing tips and tricks about it. Another thing that both my wife and I love doing is photography, so much so that we’ve thought about selling our photos as cards but again, we’ve haven’t taken that next step to start. Even music has always been a love in my life, allowing me to express myself in ways that words often are unable, thus I’d love to start practicing composing more and seeing if that can lead somewhere as well.

Articulating My Diversity

But if you read the above though, you’ll see that things all weave around and come back to one very important thing that I’ve never been able to achieve yet so far, even though I’ve played around with it countless times. That is the ability to define and express all of this diversity within a single space, a single home, online, within a website, so that people can see all that I am as a whole. Thus it’s kind of like the chicken and the egg story. You feel like you need the one to achieve the other but you can’t seem to start the one without the other.

Anyways, I think that’s enough for now. Time to absorb my thoughts and reflect on where I’ll go from here.

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