Diversifying Your Set of Skills

2.23.18
            I don’t know if the fort will ever come down at this point, it’s getting cozier by the day. Aside from that, I’ve been running around the past couple days, attending interviews, sending out resumes and trying to stay disciplined to a minimum amount of words per day.
My newly found ambition all stemmed from a conversation I had with Heather the first day I
decided to start this glorified journal.

            For the past few months, I have been chasing full-time jobs like a drug addict chasing a high and each time I have gotten excited, thinking, “I’m going to get this one,” the job is pulled a little further, just out of reach. Heather has helped me see that this focus on one full-time job is too singular and because of that, the other things I devote my time to, i.e. writing, local politics, seem even more laborious. Rather than focusing on getting part-time work in all three fields I care about, I’ve been putting all my eggs in one basket, dividing my mind into a competition of my interests rather than developing each of them individually.

             Diversifying your career path is a skill that comes easy to Heather as she has been doing it since she was a teenager. For her, it made a lot of sense to develop photography alongside her equestrian training because she couldn’t see herself risking her body day-in- and-day-out for an entire career. Thus, she came across photography, which is now the main source of income—but she kindly reminds me that it wasn’t always this way

             At the beginning of Heather’s photography career, she was willing to work for free or for peanuts and accepted jobs that others in the industry did not want to take. It was difficult because she still needed to make a living wage, but she was willing to do what she had to do to in order to gain experience. Jim Carrey has a quote something along the lines of, “you can fail at something you don’t like, so why not try and fail at something you do like?” It would’ve been easier for Heather to stay as an equestrian, but she thought about her life 20 years from then and had deduced that while it may’ve been easier in the short term, it would’ve been crippling in the long run to rely on one source of income.  Ironically, failure for Heather meant limiting herself to one full-time position.

              Now as I chase several jobs in each of my respective fields I feel more whole, engaging in conversations that cover an array of my interests rather than constraining myself to one. As I commit further to the development of my writing, political, and hospitality careers I also envision it all under one unifying umbrella in the future that Heather had the foresight to see at a much younger age. Framing my future in the context of an attaining elusive single goal has been a paralyzing approach of mine for years, but thanks to Heather, I may just be breaking free. Instead of looking at what I need, I’ve begun to look at how I can develop my interests in the diversification of my time, personality, and ideally, the stability of my financial future.

"We Are What We Repeatedly Do"

2.25.18 - Brittany’s House off Independence ~ 9:46 AM MT

            Coming back from an Internet black hole, 30 minutes later, I’m finally putting some work in.  Its really hard for me to focus when there is so much content to consume, making it really easy to divert my attention to passive activities.  I’m grateful to have Brittany and Mike’s house to take refuge, although I wish their fireplace worked. 

            The thought that’s been bumping around my head is to unify all that I’ve been thinking about since studying philosophy in a non-fiction work about living a meaningful life in the 21st century.  My immediate response to my own thought is: who are you to say how to live a meaningful life?  To which I respond, I studied philosophy, Aristotle intensively, and have meaningful interactions day-in-and-day-out.  If you are what you consistently do, then what does that make the average American?  A consumer: products, food, entertainment--that is what our culture is known for. 

            I used to think about dismantling the ideology of businesses, how ethics should be enforced onto ad agencies and mega-corporations because it’s not “right” to manipulate the psyches of the masses to make a quick buck.  A realization on that idea is that the inertia behind the consumerist exploitation of the American population is so great and monolithic that it’d be like an ant standing in front of a tank rather than a person in Tiannamen square.  A disruption of the system through bureaucratic means not only sounds like an unconquerable uphill battle, but an exercise in futility.

            Instead, focusing on the tenet of Aristotle, you are what you constantly do, in order to have a meaningful life you need to make meaningful decisions.  You need to exercise discipline in your consummatory choices, recognizing the need for pain, for silence, for the higher cost of quality products to live a more meaningful life.  Unless you’re willing to live a meaningless, surface-level life, in which case that’s fine for you to Snapchat your days away, Facebooking until the screen on your phone burns your retinas.

            Aristotle’s tenet, then, is a phrase meaning that life is a pattern of decision-making.  It doesn’t need to be framed in good or bad decisions, but rather healthy or unhealthy ones.  We do not need to invoke a 21st century code of morality to live better lives, all we need is some science.