jmcgready’s misc universe

That sentence, spoken by Michael Brown
and accompanied by a gift of one year’s expenses,
sparked the creation Harper Lee’s greatest work -
To Kill a Mockingbird. I bring it up today because
she was born 82 years ago on this very day.

I also bring it up because it brings up
some interesting points about doing the One Big Thing -
the work that focuses your gifts, talents and callings.

The first is more of a question -
“even if I got a year’s worth of expenses covered,
would I be able to get the work done?”

I know I’d have problems doing it - it’s not the
shangri-la that it seems to be when viewed
from the vantage point of working a job
just to keep a roof over your head.

It would be a year of no excuses,
where the life work you wanted becomes work.
The job becomes a convenient excuse for
not doing your true work.

Maybe having a job that isn’t your true work,
but is more amenable to your true work is better option.
83 years ago today, T.S. Eliot took a position
at Faber & Faber, leaving his dreary
former position at Lloyd’s Bank.

The problem there is that even sort of true work
still becomes work, and thus a new source
of rationalization and procrastination.

If I had the perfect summarization to offer
on this subject, I would be offering it now.

I would also be a bit more renowned than I
am right now, which is to say that I would be renowned.

So I’m now back where I was before this,
but for these two hundred some-odd words.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

Technorati: causes of procrastination, faber, harper lee, job escape from work, lloyd, merry christmas, michael brown, procrastination, rationalization, rationalization and procrastination, t s eliot, talents, to kill a mockingbird, true work

if you read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield,
you’ll notice a small section in it where he essentially
declares fundamentalism (defined as a belief in a fall from a higher state,
in a systematized corpus of recieved truth [i.e. scriptures], etc)
to be so incomaptible with true artistry that no one holding said beliefs
can be said to be a true artist.

As I hold enough beliefs to qualify
(and know of true professional artists who do), I was
initially annoyed at the passage’s tone of arrogance and condescension.

While it would be incredibly easy to blow off
anything else the rest of the book had to say,
I chose to go through the rest of the book to see
what it could teach me.

What it taught me was how to deal with criticism.

1. Criticism, whether right or wrong, is
inner resistance’s greatest ally.
You don’t need to give it any more ammo than
it already has.

2. Cull any actionable feedback from it
and trash the rest. When Moses was in the wilderness
dealing with the Israelites’ criticism,
he learned to delegate facets of his work without surrendering his mission.

3. Only one thing can counter inner resistance and
outside criticism - sit down and do your work.
The most elequent counterargument is continuing work -
be it a novel, an article, a painting, or a going venture.

Come to think of it, I’d suggest THE WAR OF ART to anyone
in the same situation as I am. The book not only lays out the course,
it gives you, in that section I mentioned, road-tested practice material.

Technorati: arrogance, condescension, fundamentalism, how to deal with criticism, inner resistance, professional artists, scriptures, the war of art, true artist