Tag Archive for "timeframe"
I keep hearing this question over and over, like a mantra that others are praying for me. Kind of starts to get laughable when you hear it in strange places from people you don’t even know. Catching it in conversations you over hear in restaurants, the question being posed to someone on a podcast, an old friend emailing you to say that he wants to know the answer.
How can I get paid doing something I love?
Soon you start wondering what exactly the universe is telling you. Is it intended for you? This question is a statement about your life, not just a passing question you overhear in the sushi bar.
But then you need to decide what it is you love to do. Not what you can do and enjoy to make a living, but the thing you love most.
Mine might be writing. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry… I just love to write. When I am stressed I sit down and put those words in prose or add a little more to the same story I have been writing for a decade. I like to think about mindfulness and who I am, where I am going and how I am getting there. I am trying to be a better person too. Trying to slow down, to make less of a signature on my environment.
I used to get paid for writing. A decade ago I was a reporter for a few small-town papers in Oklahoma. I covered the state capitol for these little papers and I loved doing it. I quit because I was greedy. I needed money to start my life with the girl I wanted to marry.
So I left journalism to pursue a career dictated by the dollar. You might enjoy what you are doing and you are getting paid for it; but do you love it?
I do enjoy what I do for a living, I am lucky there. I love the people I work with, again, lucky there. But, I don’t love it. I don’t miss my profession when I am away for a vacation. I miss the people and the experience, but not the actual job.
Would I want to own a dojo and meditation center and work on my chi? Perhaps. Would I want to get paid to write? Sure. (Let me know if you want to make a donation to the Keep-Matt-Writing find.) Could I be a life-coach? Greg might think so, but no one else I am sure. (I tell Greg to think that.)
Really, what do I love enough to do that as a way to live?
Maybe if I keep asking myself the same question pretty soon I will answer it too.
What about you?
Not sure how I can put this in terms that will do justice to the really awesome deep thoughts I am having today. But here goes.
I was driving in to the office this morning, my commute should normally take around 30 minutes, less if it is in the middle of the night and there is zero traffic, more in the morning as every other Joe drives in beside me, and I was thinking about all of the cars around me. I see many of these cars day after day. I see the people in them sometimes too: the cute blond girl who is always on the cell phone while she is still putting on her mascara, the angry guy driving his work van and chain smoking - throwing red hot cherry after cherry from the cracked window. I see the soccer mom with the stickers on the rear window, proudly displaying the names and jersey numbers of her three kids.
All of that to say this: who are these people. We are joined together somehow, we are driving the same roads, living in the same city, moving in the same direction day after day. Do they have other impact on my life? Maybe the soccer mom knows my wife somehow? Maybe the angry guy in the van will help me on the side of the road one day? Who knows.
I was in San Diego years ago and I met a family that lived in the same small town where I had grown up. They lived just blocks from my parents and I had never met them back home. But in this seemingly random location, a fast food place near the base, they notice my shirt and ask if I was from Oklahoma.
I tell them I am from a little town they have never heard of, they laugh that I wont know where they are from either and then in the conversation we learn that we live blocks from each other. I grew up one street away and never knew them; but I meet them 1100 miles from where I could have met them in my own backyard.
Connected. Timing. Oneness.
Distance closes and then you become familiar with people and places you didn’t ever think you would happen across.
I have a friend that I have known for almost five years now. We could have met a long time ago, as we had many mutual friends and acquaintances but somehow the timing just never fell in to place. Once we finally met it was not through any of the people we knew in common, it was work related and then we slowly figured out just how many people we knew together.
I like that. Kind of like we are all just threads on a tapestry. Sometimes those threads come close to other threads, combine for new colors and patterns and then move away again, to become yet more patterns and colors. Or maybe more like we are all leaves on the same tree. We touch when the wind blows, we grow close to some leaves, further away from others. But, we are still on the same tree.
