Internal Mono(b)log

Last night I went to a talk by Chase Jarvis. He’s a very good speaker, very personable and passionate about creating. He introduced a philosophy that he’s spoken about before:
* create
* share
* sustain
* (repeat)

Sharing and sustaining, for me, are the easy part. He spoke about sharing through social media, blogs, websites, etc. and sustaining by doing the stuff you need to do to make money and cover your bills so that you can do the stuff you want to do: create.

Awesome, inspirational, and so true.

When he was talking about creating, he kept coming back to the statements “Shoot what you’re passionate about” and “Shoot with your personal style/background in the images”. The 2nd one is not so bad: don’t clone other people’s work (except maybe as an exercise), shoot from your creativity and your heart and the images will sing.

On the topic of “Shoot what you’re passionate about” he started asking people in the audience what they were passionate about and I found myself shrinking away from the question. Squirming in my seat. Thinking “Oh Gods, don’t pick me.” I thought, “If he picks me I could say ‘diving’ because I used to be passionate about that…”! This has started a bit of an introspective process for me.

Where has my passion gone? Have I ever had any? It certainly seems to be missing.

It seems, in thinking about it, there is nothing I’m passionate about these days. My work is enjoyable, but not my passion. My home, is comfortable. My wife, I love and she’s my best friend. My pets are great. My hobbies are there. New tech is interesting. But nothing really excites me. Nothing wakes me up in the morning with a “What a great day, today I get to do X!”.

In the past, I’ve had goals. I think those goals, self-set, were things that highlighted my passion of the time. Become a scuba instructor, learn something new, build something, etc. These have all disappeared without new ones to take their places. So far, attempts at new ones, have no sticking power.

My world has no bright colours, just a monotone of gray. How boring and WTF! I’ve started to feel, somehow, cheated. Stuck in a rut of my own creating and not really sure how to break out.

Is this what causes mid-life crisis?

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Hi Blog! Haven’t seen you for a long time. Between twitter and facebook, there isn’t much left to be said.

Ah well, I’m here now. And I find myself of late dreaming of desiring a simpler time, a simpler life with fewer demands put upon me.

I don’t think I’m alone in this desire, but let me tell you where I’m coming from.

I work hard and have done professionally for about 25 years: I started as a developer and have worked my way up the food chain to Sr. Exec positions (CTO, VP Technology, etc.). I love technology and frequently enjoy working. I make good money, doing something that I enjoy; few people could be so lucky. Yet, many days, I can’t help but feel that the best part of my life has been “worked away” and now I work to sustain an ideal that I don’t really ascribe to and to try to pad my nest for my retirement.

RETIREMENT?! WTF… come on! Really?! It’s true. But more of that in a minute.

The Ideal
The North American Societal norm of “the ideal”: house, car, kid, dog, work 9-5, retire somewhere between 50 and 60, yada yada. Is a trap and a farce build to propagate itself. You get the job when you’re young and naive, you get credit and dig yourself a hole. You get an apartment, and start amassing stuff and grow out of the apartment into a bigger apartment. You meet someone and get married. The someone also has stuff, so now you need yet a bigger space. Renting doesn’t make sense, so you mortgage yourself to death to buy a house. Of course, your first house isn’t perfect and so you continue to dig the debt hole bigger as you renovate, repair, etc. If you’re lucky, all this time your income has been increasing. So you have more stuff, and expensive stuff. With the increased income comes increased responsibility, and the increased need to act and dress appropriately, drive a suitable car, live in a good enough neighborhood. All of these things, of course, cost more money… death spiral

No wonder so many people die young of stress related illnesses!

I’ve bought into the ideal for 25 years, and frankly, the shine has worn off.

Retirement?
Well, I’m 41. Kim’s a similar age Living comfortably without working implies at least one of a few truths:
- you’ve won a big lottery
- you have no expenses and no debt
- you have some sort of residual income to support your expenses and/or debts

While I’d love to win a big lottery ($2m would do), it’s unlikely. I had a small winfall when a previous company was bought by a larger company, and I’m still paying for it . And the chances of another startup lottary win are there, but certainly diminished in these trying times.

No expenses and no debt. 0 expenses would be pretty hard: food, utilities, etc. all cost something. It’s not impossible, but one would have to be creative.

That leaves residual income. My current plan is to have the house paid off and rented out to generate income. Seems like a good plan, but it drives a buy-in to the ideal, which I’d really like to loose.

*sigh*

So I find myself at a crux, a decision point. Do I continue to work, to pay into the ideal, to put in my time to execute against my current plan or do I trash the plan, shed the ideal like a pair of dirty coveralls and move in an entirely new direction. Net or no net. Wow. Not a decision to be taken lightly. Maybe it’s not even binary.. it’s probably easier if it’s binary… certainly simpler if it’s binary…

*sigh* (again)

Last night Kim and I went to Kensington Market for the Festival of Lights to celebrate the Solstice.

It was *really* nice. But more than that… it was really sincere.

While Kim and I were walking along in the parade along with the drummers, puppets, costumed folks, and other celebrants, I was almost overcome by the simplicity and sincerity of the event. There were no trappings, no ritual, no leadership (per se) – just a bunch of folks making noise and lighting the darkest night of the year.

*That’s* what it means (at least to me) to be Pagan.

Thanks