I used to think I was good at everything. At least, everything I put my mind to and am passionate about. But I'm wondering if my passion for something doesn't necessarily mean I should pursue it. Professionally, especially, personally perhaps.
There's one thing I've always been good at, and that's storytelling. When I was a kid I "published" several "books" through our elementary school's "publishing house." One on ballet, another on my dog. I still have them somewhere. For some reason, I thought I had something to say, so I wrote it down and illustrated it.
My oldest diary starts in 1992, when I was 9 years old. Shockingly, it was a Precious Moments journal. We lived a few minutes from the location of the Precious Moments Chapel in Southern Missouri, so it was natural that I loved the stuff. Since 1992, I filled journal after journal. When I was in high school I did what I'll call "mixed media" journals. I took things I posted on my LiveJournal, things I cut out of magazines, and I put them together into an emotional explosion of my life as a teenager. In 2006, I started Just Call Me Chaviva to catalog my Jewish journey. Oddly enough, I didn't start the blog at the beginning of my journey to Judaism, but rather the moment I lept from the mikvah. That was the beginning of a chapter, if you will. At some point in college, I became the Kvetching Editor, and since then I've successfully branded myself, my vision, my story, in kind.
I tell stories. Mostly I tell stories that ooze out of my own experiences, and that's what I've always been good at. Maybe people like me aren't meant to exist in the real world, but rather in words and pages and compositions.
Of course, the question is, how do you monetize yourself?
Or, better yet, do you even want to monetize yourself? In a perfect world, I'd have millions of dollars in my pocket and I'd just write. And write. And write. Until my fingers curled from overuse.
I guess I'm not sure what I'm doing right now. Emotionally, I'm invested in finding a spouse and making cute little mini mes. Professionally, I guess I feel confused. I'm trying to figure out whether my personal passions translate into professional success. And if they don't, then where that leaves me.
I wish I could fall in line. Life would be easier that way. I don't know how I ended up this way, but for some reason all I have in me is letters and words and sentences and paragraphs and narratives.
The Storyteller's Dilemma
Thursday, May 31, 2012
some people are cursed with lack of vision and some are cursed with too much vision. I'd say you're later. I give you sympathy because so am I.
ReplyDeleteMy advice? As totally cliche and overly simple as it seems: live and let live. Stop trying to plan your life and let it fall into place.
I have had many lives...including many jobs...what I learned is the more comfortable I am with myself, strengths/non strengths......the choices have emerged. At different ages and stages I wanted/needed different things...but I do know there is a consistent to my narrative...
ReplyDeleteyou love stores...living them... hearing them ...writing them...so do it...what you do for a living may or may not include that....but it is still a part of your being. That is a part of your narrative.... write....see what happens...find work that allows you to write or has regular enough hours where you have free time to write....keep digging in your "dirt" and you'll hit your gold.....
You're confused because you don't know who you are. When you were dating Taylor, you didn't want to get married or have kids. Now you want both- with Chabadniks (!)! From reading your blog, you also seem to move around nonstop, change jobs all the time, and just generally have no direction in your life. You were dismayed when your ex started dating as soon as you got divorced (or whatever the situation was)- but you were doing the exact same thing at the same time. You were fully invested in your studies- but then decided to move clear across the country and drop out. There is absolutely no way for you to settle down and find a spouse until YOU know who you are and what you want out of your life. A spouse can't provide that stability, as I'm sure you know, if you have no idea about your own goals. If you're lost in terms of your professional life, start to think of concrete goals, instead of endlessly attending conferences and meetings and events and talking via buzzwords and nonsense-speak (based on what you post here and on your Twitter). How can you expect to be financially secure if you fly around the country every week to sit around a table and say things like, "We need to engage with the community," or "We need a more comprehensive social-media initiative" or "We need to strategize and regroup so that we can modify our creative paths" or whatever stuff you constantly post.
ReplyDeleteI know it's not as quite as fun as settling down into an actual corporate job where you have to work and not just go to constant meetings for no reason without earning any income, but you are approaching 30- it's time to take your life into your own hands instead of flip-flopping back and forth between 85 part-time gigs and looking for guys who run the gamut from hip vegetarian non-Jews to full-fledged Chabadniks. This "swinging pendulum" approach is symptomatic of your mental state (in my opinion) and jumping into another marriage won't remedy anything at this point.
^^Real advice for your well-being right there.
I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Live and let live is hard. That's why I'm rethinking my career path. Either work in a stale corporate environment where I can be myself outside of work, or work alone in an environment in which I'm comfortable 100 percent of the time but perpetually broke :)
ReplyDelete