Passion, and Responsibility

In the time-honored field of career counseling, they always tell you to ‘work from your passion’, because if you do what you love, any job becomes enjoyable, you’re willing to put in a lot more work, and hence that brings about a bigger chance of success, not to mention all the good stuff like personal fulfillment and growth.

Well, after quite a bit of soul-searching and equivalent avoidance, I realised that I don’t know what my passion is. Everything so far in my life has come very easily – the sequential progression through educational institutions, the various achievements. I never had to think about what to do, and naturally focused on the short-term objective of ‘doing what I’m doing now well’ instead of asking ‘why am I doing this, what do I want to do, and how do I do it?’ That’s not to say I didn’t love what I was doing, but that it wasn’t a conscious choice, it just happened.

So, in this day and age, where people are solidly divided into two camps, the practical ones and the idealists, what’s preventing me from following the former and chasing indicators of success like respectability, status, achievement, and wealth? Answer: I am, at heart, an idealist.

An idealist without a passion exists in a spiritual vacuum, like a chicken without a head (or heart). Not happy, and fundamentally frustrated. Toss in my perfectionism and you get inertia.

(Of course, there is a distinct possibility too, that subconsciously I do know what I would love to do, but am not willing to consciously admit it lest it withers under the glare of cold reality. But that’s the subject of another post)

So, goal time. I will instill in myself the belief that:

I will find what I love. I will keep searching and never settle until I find it.

I have to take the personal responsibility of laying the groundwork, looking for, and actually defining a passion to align my life with. Nobody’s going to present it nicely on a platter. In fact, passion is probably not found, but chosen. After all, where I am is the combined result of all my past choices. Where I will be depends on what I choose now.

With that, somehow I think I can rest easier. The stakes are lower now. I’m not looking for an eternal spiritual marriage with my career anymore (which hung me up over the past few months). I’m just looking for a job, while I dedicate myself to fulfilling all these idiosyncratic idealistic tendencies.

And if it comes to be that if I can’t define it soon, I ought to take heart in this quote by Joseph Campbell:

“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. “

So, Live!

A Life of Ease…..

is no life indeed.

It’s 2008, and I’m back home in Singapore, pondering what to do next. Again. Three months ago, since I left America, I’ve traveled to Spain, France, and Laos. But mostly what I’ve done is one or two desultory part-time jobs and a lot of lazing around at home, waiting for a saviour to hand me my destiny on a platter.

But that won’t happen. And so I can’t think out of this mental box that I’ve created – the notion that I can’t take any action until I figure out what I really want to do. And that’s a really bad trap to be in. It makes you wake up late, peruse the career books and job listings (but not actually apply to anything), swing wildly between almost-revelation and despair…. until even uncertainty gets too comfortable, and you get used to feeling it and ignoring the vague sensation of quietly sinking into somnolence.

Analysis paralysis. Bad decision making. Poor metacognition. Call it whatever you want, but oh, it’s there.

I want to feel alive again, and not quite so useless. Lack of motivation or direction happens when you’re lazy and unfocused, and it becomes a pretty vicious cycle with ever decreasing energy levels.

What I need now is Action. I am, simply put, stuck in a rut. And a very comfortable rut it is. Still, ruts can sometimes be instructive, holding up a mirror and forcing me to see the gaps in my life-planning, the weakness in my thinking, and most importantly, my ignorance of the world, my dependence, and unwillingness to grow up. So, what to do now? How shall I move on?

Here goes. Some ideas, from the rusty brain.

Instead of ‘what should i do next’ I ought to think about what to do next, and think about where I want to be in 10 years, 20 years, etc etc. This is the time-honoured practice of setting goals. They can be miniature ones, like ‘today I’m going to write my blog again’, to long-term goals of financial independance. And of course, life goals like writing a novel (and getting it published), and walking all of the AT. The point is, write them down! And then break them down! And the start doing them!

Also important is the idea of setting up a daily habit, so that each day doesn’t pass in a blur. With the notion that you can learn discipline from it, and that habits gradually become a natural part of your life. I’m going to try to 1. wake up early and 2. do yoga or go running and 3. journal or draw or blog.

Hmm. Look at the sentence above. What’s the problem with it? Well, the first part is try. In order to get anything done, the operative word is don’t just try, DO. Excuses have a tendency to compound. Which is why some people (like me!!) need a carrot and a stick to enforce discipline. I have two wooden boxes. Every day I get it right I’ll drop some money into the large box. Every day I miss out, I take that amount, plus 10 percent interest, out of the large and put it in the small. It starts compounding, if you serially miss days. Once a month I do an accounting, and the money in the large is for me to spend on me, and the small goes to other people (Alumni fund, anyone? hehe). Voila! A mini-economy! (Am off to place a dollar into the large box now)

Lastly, and the hardest thing to convince myself of is, there are no wrong decisions. Some decisions may be better or worse, but there are no wrong decisions! Every next step leads from the previous one, whether continuously (I like this job, let’s continue) or tangentially (meh, maybe something else) or in total reverse (time to go to grad school and study physics!). I’m in my mid-twenties, which is plenty of time to try new things, and conversely, plenty of time to waste worrying about doing the wrong thing.

So, with that, let’s see me take some Action!