The Dilemma

The following post may not make sense. It was written without an outline, and has not been re-read or revised.

Things are going well. Well then why do I feel so Crappy? (notice the capitol "C"). Maybe it is just the regular depression... that happens every few months. Last time I solved it by putting more power into something that I actually like to do and have had a desire to do since i was young, but never knew how to or that it was even possible. This time, the depression is caused by the very fact that I am doing what I want.

I have been spending much more time on trying to learn how to paint, trying to make up for 20 years of ignoring the desire, and I find that it is interrupting with my current career performance... maybe it is just imagined, maybe not. I do know that I am performing my salary worth and more, but what makes me depressed this time, is that I am not doing the absolute best I can... of course to do that would mean taking my work home with me like i used to (and loved to). A huge part of me wants to take my work home with me now too, because I like doing it and I love learning new things. I have found though, that when I do bring my work home now, which I still do, but to a lesser extent, I feel stress because I am doing this for free, and not doing my own hobby, which I still have crazy dreams of making into a job.

I know that I like what I do now, and I get paid for it, and I excel at it, but I still tend to view it as a transitional job... like an internship, or summer job, before I do what I really want to do. I have no desire to make a career out of it. But it makes me money, and so long as I am improving at this I have no worry for the future.

Ever since I was a kid I have loved to draw, and wanted to learn to paint... Had I never met Maria and discovered that there was a world outside of Michigan and the US, I would most likely have studied art in University, despite the fact that I had no idea there was any way to make money, and I thought the term "starving artist" was true. (now of course I see many people who studied art and design and make adequate if not great livings). I am not sorry that I studied Japanese instead, as at that time I really loved studying foreign languages, and still do... if I had the time, and I see my International experience, as one of my greatest assets, and the biggest influence on how I view the world. But as I read the biographies of many artists, famous and not, I notice that they all entered art schools out of high-school or earlier. A little late for that I guess.

So what's the problem? If I pursue my dream half-way... making it only a hobby, I can not give the attention to the career that pays my bills. I can't do it 130%. My interests seem to change frequently, but one thing that doesn't change is that when I am interested in something I pursue it 130%. Maybe it is aquariums, which when I was a kid I spent so much of my free time on and was what I consider a miniature expert on. Maybe I should have studied marine biology, and believe me it has crossed my mind. When I decided I liked track I really lived the next year thinking mostly about the track season. Even the football season was just training for track. When I met Maria and became interested in foreign languages and decided to live in a foreign country, I spent the next couple years consumed by that, until I finally went to Japan, and once I had done that, I spent every moment I could studying Japanese... from practicing kanji in every other class, to working at the local sushi bar where I could practice. A few years ago I became interested in marketing and business, and spent the next year reading every business book I could.

The reason I started working at my current company was because I was under the impression that it was a marketing company. Through a series of events, despite the fact that I couldn't even use my own browser before I started, I wound up being the head systems administrator / programmer / technical advisor. Great! I loved it... but it is still missing something... like what I really want to do.

Is it too late though to start what I really want to do, and wanted to do before a girl sidetracked me and indirectly led to this?

I got off on a little tangent, so lets get back to the 130% thing. When I was happy to take my work home, and read my programming books all hours of the day, and spend hours checking out all the Linux commands I will never need, just so I can know them, there was no problem. I did what I wanted and I got better at my job, and I felt confident that I was doing the best I could do.

From a few weeks ago, I have stopped taking work home where possible. This has of course allowed me to spend more time on learning to paint, but it has caused a huge loss in confidence in my own web-related career. I am no longer doing every thing I can... only every thing I get paid for. The problem with this is that I was never looking at the salary as the only benefit. The other great benefit is that I was learning and getting a chance to use what I have learned. I didn't care so much what my salary was, because I saw a that I would soon outgrow the current company and have more options... I fell like switching to a "salary-man" will erase any of those opportunities... as my learning will be cut in half (or more since most of my learning occurred outside of work).

I guess if I had confidence that I could make a living with art, design, or illustration (such careers include everything shown here, and teaching which I think I would probably love... so long as I am not teaching English), I would not have a problem, but my drawings are nothing more than "better than some peoples" and I am starting awfully late... Is it worth it to spend time on it, thus sacrificing chances in my current career? If I decided not to pursue art / illustration I will be applying for grad-school this year in Information Architecture, which I am interested in, and would like to do what others who followed that path do, but probably not long-term.

To re-cap, my dilemma now is that I have something I would like to pursue (artsy crap), but feel like crap for lowering my standards on my current project (my job) in order to make time to pursue it.

The End.

On a related note, there was a Talk of the Nation yesterday about time and how we use it. The speaker said that basically the way we use and regard time is all mess*d up, and that we spend too much time on our work. But that solving this is not an individual problem, something that I can do myself, but rather a collective problem that needs to be solved by society as a whole, by passing laws to limit the number of hours we work etc... On one hand it makes me feel good to know that I am not simply "lazy" to have been shrugging off work as I have lately (not taking it home if it is not finished on sallaried time)

On the other hand, I know that society wont be changing nytime soon to make it acceptable for me to pursue my own interests... so it worries me a little.