Going Dark?
November 21, 2007
I’m at a crossroads that I’ve long suspected was coming. A few years ago I made a conscious decision to focus on my work in education and technology at the expense of my writing. I put my notebooks away, gradually withdrew from online art communities, and greatly reduced the amount of fiction and poetry I read (not because I consider it harmful to my work, quite the opposite, but because it was a reminder of the part of my psyche I was neglecting). I figured I would give my job my maximum attention and see where it took me… if I ended up doing little or going nowhere then my quandary about how to be successful in both career and art would be solved for me.
That didn’t happen. I didn’t really expect it would. Instead of becoming bored or spinning my wheels I have found my way into one of the most exciting and fitting areas of education and technology and gained a peer group that not only continues to amaze me every day, but makes me wonder how I was lucky enough to gain acceptance to their circle. I’m far from the brightest or most accomplished in the circles I hang in and onto, but I feel that I’m making a contribution that matters in a field that matters… and I enjoy doing it. It’s hard to complain about that.
And yet…
I am wracked with frustration at neglecting the writer and poet part of me, a part I actually consider fundamental to who I am in a way that career work never quite fits. I don’t want to be remembered as the tech guy or the ed tech guy or (please, God) the blog guy. There’s nothing wrong with that being one’s essential identity, it’s just not me. No matter how much I push other concerns to the side, I go to the office knowing that I would trade all of the work I’ve done so far there to have written just a few great poems. But I wouldn’t trade the people and the friendships. Those are priceless.
So, what to do? If I were a greater mind and a better artist I might be able to do both at a high level. I can’t. I can’t switch my intellectual mechanism from one domain to the other fast enough. I need to free up some cognitive space.
My first impulse is to “go dark” and withdraw, reducing the intellectual demands of my job. There’s plenty of existing day-to-day work with recently established theory to support it… I don’t need to expend so much effort theorizing anew, trying to create fresh conference presentations and performing advanced training. The successful artists I know tend to have jobs they can leave behind at the end of each day and that don’t encroach too much on their creative space. But as Brian Lamb observed, that might free up head space, but it’s almost guaranteed to make life less pleasant. Do I want to spend my working life that way? And withdrawing, in this field, is an option that necessarily involves moving backward… I can’t leave for a year and come back without having to make up that time, losing a lot of connections, etc.
Nor is there much hope of integrating work and art. My writing is relatively traditional in nature– no Cory Doctorow style stories or Po Bronson observations from me. I’m theoretically interested in some emerging forms– technologically aided and not– but I’m at best indifferent to creating technologically innovative pieces.
I am not independently wealthy. Regardless of how much time I have left, I need a job. So this weekend will be spent taking some stock and trying to figure out how to move forward. Suggestions welcome.
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All me-stream all the time.
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November 21st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Chris, I’ve been struggling lately too. There’s a strong feeling of being stretched too thin, of irrelevance, of wheel-spinning, of wasting time. I’m still working through it (probably more publicly than I should, with the occasional Twitter-venting episode), but I keep coming around to a few basic themes. Not sure if this’ll help you, but at least writing it out might help me. Yeah. I’m a selfish bastard.
- Life (and job/career) is what you make of it.
- If I just skate by, withdraw, and do what is expected/asked, I might do fine and expend less energy, but at what cost? status quo is boring, and in our field, obsolete. If I withdraw and just do what’s asked (based on outdated expectations) then I am no longer a contributing member of the field (whatever field that may be).
- I define my own sense of worth, not anyone else. Even if they (at least nominally) sign my paychecks. If I let anyone else define who I am, I cease to be myself.
- the most rewarding experiences of my life (both personally and professionally) have been when I threw caution to the wind and just did something. Taking a risk is what makes life worth living. Playing it safe is like dying a little bit. OK, that’s a bit overmelodramatic, but the idea is that truly living involves putting yourself out there.
Now, how does any of that rambling help find and maintain a balance? I’m not sure it does. But, starting from the fundamental position that my life is my own, a fair number of things build from that…
November 21st, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Well, I’d suggest financing your artistic pursuits with a bank heist, except doing that in blog comments doesn’t seem like such a good idea.
ut melius, quicquid erit, pati,
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum: sapias, uina liques, et spatio breui
spem longam reseces
November 21st, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Recently when talking about you to Jared Stein I mentioned to him that both of you have a lot in common referring to your love of writing. He has similar struggles and may be able offer more helpful words of wisdom. If you wanted to focus more on your writing and the like but still wanted to work to some extent in ed tech I could offer you a part-time remote job. Sure it would not pay great but may be enough to help ends meet.
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:03 am
John would have been more accurate to say we have some common interests, as I’d guess, based on your comments, that your engagement at both ed tech career and creative writing is higher than mine. But I do in fact have the exact same delimma, and a family to boot, and the looming insistence of and urgent longing for a PhD. But there’s only so much time in the world, right? You can’t be excellent at everything but maybe you can be quite damn good at many things. So right now I pour myself into the 9 to 7 of ed tech and teaching, spend time with the family in the evening, and write almost every morning for 7 to 9. It’s almost impossible to maintain, but I have no regrets so far (nothing worth reading either, perhaps, but at least I can say I tried it! No excuses.)
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:09 am
Oh, and if I’ve learned one thing in what I call my early rising adventure its that my writing efforts are never as constricted by limitations of time or energy as they are by my internal motivation. It’s not as hard for me to get up at 6am every day and essentially work for 12 hours straight as it is for me to battle off my own discouragement and tendencies to indulge distractions each time I sit down to write..
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Chris,
I don’t know exactly what it means, and I throw it around way too loosely, but here is a quote by Roland Barthes that keeps me going when I stare into the abyss on a daily basis:
“You can’t live a wrong life rightly.”
Hope it helps
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:37 am
I don’t think anyone who cares about you will remember you as “the blog guy,” you’re much more than that. I’ve nothing new to add w/r/t suggestions about your writing. Gabriela has a similar challenge, in that we just don’t have space to accommodate the large oil paintings she would like to do. She’s having a hard time getting into harness with another medium. But the truth is, if she were to make sketching or watercolor or some other medium that actually fits in our house her _daily_ practice, shutting out the world daily for this time to be with her art in this new medium, she would indeed come to find the satisfaction from it that she used to only get from oil. It’s the process, not the results, or so I hear.
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I appreciate the comments. I think the fact that this isn’t about finding physical time nor is it about knowing that process is as more important– or more– than results, just reaffirms my inability to communicate outside of technology and education. If I was ever able to…
November 26th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Well, as John K, mentioned if you really want to do ed tech just PT let us know as we actually have something open right now.
And if you need a writing mate to push and be pushed by shoot me an e-mail. I’m not at all social with writing (or really anything else), but sometimes I think it would be useful to have some writer-ly connections, if only for the selfish reason of keeping myself on track.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Looks like you made your decision. It’s a pity, but I understand how one might need to focus. My kids are all grown so it’s easier. Your contributions brought an important if undefinable something to the Concerto for Blog and Countless Tweets.