Not me, man. Not me.
I’ve been around awhile. Longer than you might guess. Through grad school and off into the world of work. Decades of work. Successful? Moderately by most first world standards. Interesting and (often) challenging position in a stable, sustainable, good-doing enterprise. But it has never been enough, intellectually and creatively. I write (here and elsewhere). For others and for myself. Sometimes you just have to push it out of your head, like therapy. I read in enormous quantities. Literature modern and classical, tech-zines, short story, poetry, history and biography, science and business. I compose. Poetry. Music. Visual Art. I engage politically.
Some know me as a professional. Some as a composer. Some as literati. Some as artist. Some as political activist. Some as environmental activist. Some have no clue. Very few know me in more than one or two of these contexts -- only the very smallest circle of immediate family and closest few friends. There is certainty in the knowledge that those who know me in one context would reject the ones that know me in another.
In the world of American medicine, specialists out-earn the generalist by huge multiples. In my non-medical world, I am a life generalist. Jack of many trades, master of none? Perhaps. I have made countless attempts to set my intellectual hyperactivity aside and hone in one or the other aspects of my interest in order to become more successful, or more proficient. These attempts have always been unsatisfactory. Always hollow. Often depressing. Though the same unfortunate emotional results often occur in my most earnest multi-focal adventures. If I had only paid more attention to this detail or that, the outcome would have been better, the pain less, the pleasure more.
So what do we do about it? We start another blog. This brain dump that few, if any will ever read. This therapy that is bound to break all of the rules of successful blogging. Especially that one about finding your niche and sticking to it. Single-mindedness? Intellectual and creative prison. I know that I must sacrifice certain heights of achievement to be in my own freedom. Here’s to dodging the bullets.
