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packetqueue.net

Musings on computer stuff, and things... and other stuff.

Creativity

April 8, 2017 writing

Just Write is Just Right

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

I took my daugh­ter and step­son to see one of my favorite authors a cou­ple of days ago. Neil Gaiman also hap­pens to be one of their favorite authors, hav­ing penned a favorite sto­ry, Cora­line, they both share a love for. Con­sid­er­ing that most of my favorite authors have passed away, this was a rare treat for all of us, and we did not come away dis­ap­point­ed.

Mr. Gaiman came out and was imme­di­ate­ly charm­ing and wit­ty, which is not some­thing all authors are, prompt­ing my step­son to observe that if the whole book thing does­n’t work out, he can suc­ceed as a come­di­an. I don’t expect authors to be good at any­thing but writ­ing, and it’s always a nice sur­prise when they are. It’s also nice when any­one can so imme­di­ate­ly grab the atten­tion of a 14-year old teenage boy who spends most of his time buried in video games, YouTube, SnapChat, or some oth­er online endeav­or. That itself was worth the price of admis­sion.

Mr. Gaiman per­formed sev­er­al read­ings of var­i­ous works, all of which were read and enun­ci­at­ed with a qual­i­ty I am sel­dom used to hear­ing from an author, and all of which were incred­i­bly engag­ing. Even works which I had already read were brought to life with a col­or I had not found in my own read­ing. The fact that my 17-year old daugh­ter could be brought near­ly to tears by a short sto­ry was again worth its weight in gold.

Hav­ing said all of that, the most inter­est­ing part of the evening, and why I am writ­ing this, were the audi­ence mem­bers’ ques­tions Mr. Gaiman answered between read­ings of his myr­i­ad col­or­ful works. Ques­tions rang­ing from opin­ions on oth­er authors, to what he thought of Amer­i­cans (Mr. Gaiman is British by birth), to what he thought of being “a nerd-girl’s dream man.” It was his answer to the much-hack­neyed ques­tion of what advice he would give to aspir­ing authors, how­ev­er, which was the most pre­scient.

With a brief pause and a bit of a rue­ful chuck­le, his advice to aspir­ing authors was to “stop aspir­ing.” He went on to elab­o­rate, “write some­thing.” It is sim­ple advice, and pos­si­bly dis­ap­point­ing to those look­ing for some secret sauce to help them under­stand why they have not yet suc­ceed­ed as writ­ers, and yet more dead-on and hon­est than the usu­al advice-filled arti­cles on the sub­ject.

“Just write” might be the go-to expla­na­tion for any num­ber of endeav­ors from fic­tion, to non-fic­tion, or even to soft­ware devel­op­ment. How many of us, the “aspir­ing” writ­ers of the world, spend an inor­di­nate amount of our time try­ing to fig­ure out the secret to suc­cess, all the while post­pon­ing the one thing that might get us where we so long­ing­ly desire to go. Writ­ers of fic­tion need to write, writ­ers of non-fic­tion need to write, and devel­op­ers of software–writers in our own right–need to write.

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion seems to be the birthright of every sort of cre­ative per­son. We are often con­tent, too con­tent, to live with­in our own minds, dream­ing of the things we will write, the things we will cre­ate, the won­ders we will bring forth to an ador­ing world. And yet, to an outsider–everyone who is not us–we have not done any­thing. We are the dream­ers, the weavers of tales, the cre­ators of things, the mak­ers of the worlds that live only with­in our own thoughts.

I am as guilty of this as any­one, and just as capa­ble of hid­ing this truth from myself. I can write entire arti­cles in my head, con­coct soft­ware from whole cloth that will change the world, and some­how be con­tent in the knowl­edge that “I could” even if I do not. That might sat­is­fy us on a super­fi­cial lev­el, but I think that deep down we all know the truth: that we have done noth­ing. Cre­at­ing a thing, and sub­ject­ing it to the crit­i­cism of the light of day and the vagaries of the human con­di­tion takes an immense amount of courage, and it is often eas­i­er to keep our cre­ations as pris­tine and unmo­lest­ed suc­cess­es, if only in our own mind.

Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, as we grow up we must put aside child­ish things, and that means accept­ing the fact that we must com­plete some­thing. We must take what is in our heads, com­mit it to its prop­er form, and let come what may. It may be good, or it may be bad, but it is bet­ter for hav­ing seen the light than any­thing not giv­en form but in the world with­in our own head. Mr. Gaiman may be more cre­ative than some, and less cre­ative than oth­ers, but he has learned the one thing that many of us have for­got­ten, or nev­er learned: that we must stop aspir­ing if we want to see our dreams real­ized. This arti­cle, for instance, could have con­tin­ued to float gen­tly around the aether of my mind, but I stopped aspir­ing and I wrote some­thing, and that was the whole point.

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January 18, 2014 Uncategorized

Burnout Redux

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

Late­ly I have been strug­gling with career burnout.  Or maybe it’s exis­ten­tial grief, or bad bur­ri­tos, gas, and too many real­i­ty tele­vi­sion marathon binges.  What­ev­er it is, how­ev­er, I not­ed with some inter­est this arti­cle by Matthew Men­gel (@mengelm) over on the Pack­et Push­ers web­site.  Matthew is push­ing aside his career in the net­work­ing indus­try to pur­sue his true pas­sion in astron­o­my, after win­ning a schol­ar­ship to com­plete a PhD pro­gram in the sub­ject.

It is fair to say that I read his arti­cle with a fair bit of jeal­ousy.  After 22 years in the com­put­er indus­try, I nurse night­ly dreams (or delu­sions) of mov­ing on to oth­er things.  I said as much on Twit­ter, and found a sur­pris­ing num­ber of oth­er folks in my cohort who felt the same.  Long careers and hours had tak­en a toll.

More sur­pris­ing, how­ev­er, was what hap­pened when the dis­cus­sion turned to just what exact­ly we would all do, giv­en the chance.  There were a few out­liers, but far and away the answers were all in the fine arts or gener­i­cal­ly cre­ative space: art, film, writ­ing, and wood­work­ing were men­tioned.  And the num­ber one rea­son why was that these were all pur­suits that were start­ed dur­ing the naïveté of youth, before we all real­ized that the mon­ey was no good.

I know that I nev­er dreamed of a career in com­put­ers when I was a child.  My dreams were all root­ed in writ­ing, art, and music.  I ful­ly expect­ed to be a musi­cian, famous artist, or reclu­sive, well-read writer.  Obvi­ous­ly, that didn’t hap­pen.

I don’t know when I real­ized the imprac­ti­cal­i­ty of the arts as a career, but at some point in my lat­er high school years I decid­ed that the law would be a more prac­ti­cal pro­fes­sion.  Luck­i­ly, my uncle (a very suc­cess­ful attor­ney) talked me out of that, and I acci­den­tal­ly hap­pened into the world of pro­fes­sion­al com­put­er-wran­gling.

I had been pro­gram­ming and hack­ing since the age of eight, so when some­one offered me a job at what seemed like incred­i­ble pay back in 1992, I didn’t think twice.  In ret­ro­spect, it’s amaz­ing how low the ask­ing price for a person’s soul turns out to be.  Fast for­ward to the present, and we’re back to the con­ver­sa­tion about burnout and choic­es.

In talk­ing to the good folks on Twit­ter, and friends and cowork­ers, it seems as if there are a tremen­dous num­ber of peo­ple who would do some­thing else, if the mon­ey was left out of the equa­tion.  One of my best friends and I were talk­ing over the hol­i­days on this very top­ic, and it seems as if we’re all vic­tims of our own suc­cess.  “I’d move and change careers, “ he said, “but I can’t afford to start over.”

And there’s the prob­lem.  The same prob­lem every­thing always boils down to: mon­ey, or, more real­is­ti­cal­ly, food and shel­ter.  In all of human his­to­ry, we’re still slaves to our own abil­i­ty to sur­vive.  It used to be a cli­mate, or food-source, or shel­ter that drove us to wher­ev­er we end­ed up in life.  All we’ve done in the whole of our species is man­age to abstract that con­cept in the form of mon­ey.

Maybe I’m read­ing too much in to all of this, or being too dra­mat­ic, I don’t know.  All I do know is there are a hell of a lot of us out there, it seems, doing things for mon­ey that we wish we didn’t have to do any more.  I don’t know what that means, and I’m hes­i­tant to project my own anx­i­eties on the rest of you, but I think it at least begs a cou­ple of ques­tions:

(1) If the mon­ey was equal to what you do now, or what your career will ulti­mate­ly bring you in terms of earn­ing poten­tial, would you do some­thing dif­fer­ent?

(2) When were you the hap­pi­est in your life?  What were you doing?  Was it what you do now?

Feel free to send me answers and feed­back via my twit­ter han­dle (@someclown) or here in the com­ments.

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