Jessica Wildfire's Blog, page 466

Talent and hard work count for a lot, but you’ve got to mind the store, no matter your passion. :D

Talent and hard work count for a lot, but you’ve got to mind the store, no matter your passion. :D

Threats great! You’re right; things do have a way of sorting out. :D

Threats great! You’re right; things do have a way of sorting out. :D

You’re making me blush!

You’re making me blush! I’m glad it seems effortless, because it took a lot of writing and throwing stuff away.

Professors Can Be Sexy

M y first year teaching, a student asked me for a private meeting after class one day. He looked perplexed and over-caffeinated, like he…

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Yeah, that’s classy!

Yeah, that’s classy! You’re not the first person to get angry and then eat some humble pie. Eating humble pie with dignity is a true life skill.

Glad you liked it!

Glad you liked it! There’s no reason why you can’t write your own version, though I’ll agree sometimes I switch gears if I’m seeing some good posts on the same topic.

Confront Your Vices

Not every addiction ends up with the discovery of your corpse in some abandoned warehouse by the river. No, some forms of addiction sneak…

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Great list!

Great list! Thanks for adding me. Some great writers here. Followed anyone not already in my network. :)

Pursue Your Passion(s) Practically

Let’s assume up front that you have true talent. You’re a gifted singer, artist, dancer, musician, or writer. But nobody’s discovered you yet. Almost every day, you read or hear success stories that mystify you. Someone began their acting career at age 17 after a talent scout found them laughing with friends over iced mochas outside JC Penny or some shit. Some MFA student’s professor introduced her to their literary agent. A singer made a demon of a demo on her iPhone, and some friend of a friend convinced a music producer to give it a listen. You get the idea.

What I’m about to say may depress, or inspire you. Here it is: there’s a fuck load of talented people in the world. Not all of them amass millions of fans worldwide and earn a fortune overnight. Many of them eek out their daily existence on a string of freelance jobs. Some of them go into teaching, some pursue their passions on the side their entire lives, and others give up. It’s not their fault they don’t win the mother load.

Nobody ever admits this, but the world has an economy of success. It’s almost like karma. Humanity can only handle so many wildly successful people at one time. Stars rise and fall. For example: the number of people in the world who enjoy comedy can only watch so many stand-up specials on Netflix. Right now, more comedy specials pop up than I can reasonably watch as a human being. Also, we’re in a golden age of television. There’s more great shows than I can keep up with. And so on.

You know what that means? Hundreds of talented screen writers, novelists, actors, directors, and musicians will have to wait their turn. We’ll keep producing content until a slot in the queue opens.

I’m just now realizing this point. It feels pretty fucking good. Maybe you’ll wait for years. Maybe you’ll see a dozen or a hundred people live through their 15 or 20 minutes of fame and fortune before yours comes.

You might even give up once or twice. That’s fine. Some of the most successful writers I know took a hiatus. Sometimes that hiatus lasted years. But they came back to their passion eventually, and they found the success they wanted. Other people “quit.” That’s not always bad. An aspiring poet might realize he’s great at spreadsheets and pivot tables. He has a hidden gift he taps into later in life. He never wins the Pulitzer, but he does unexpectedly become an accountant or risk analyst for a modestly successful legal firm, and gradually earns respect…and promotions…and raises. Even better, he earns an ass load of cash that enables him to do other things he wanted: travel, take up latent hobbies like surfing or sand-castle building. Meanwhile, those experiences give him material to write a couple of great poetry collections that earn some stellar reviews in small literary journals. Maybe this guy even places a couple of poems in The New Yorker. Decades after his death, his closet of unpublished poems surfaces and people come to regard him as the 21st century Wallace Stevens. Fantastic.

If you truly love doing something, you’ll do it no matter what. Fuck fame and recognition. If you really love singing, then sing. Take lessons. Grow. Sing in a choir, or in commercials, or in the local theater company. You’ll enjoy it. There’s nothing wrong with that. The fact that you never became famous means nothing.

Me? It turns out I’m pretty fucking good at math. In some ways, I always knew that. Math never came especially hard to me, but I just wasn’t interested in it compared to writing and drawing and poetry. Guess what? Being good at math is a serious career booster. I’ve taught myself skills with numbers that advanced my academic career in ways I didn’t think possible. I’m actually making more money now than I ever thought I could. So you know what? Fuck my original daydream, for now.

Six years ago, I remember sitting in a car with a friend musing over my life choices. My sighs frosted the passenger window as I said, “I guess I could become a professor. I mean, I’ll have to pay the bills somehow. But teaching just sounds so fucking boring.” Here I am, a professor, and I enjoy it a lot. For a while, I thought you could only pursue one passion. As things turn out, you can pursue at least two. Maybe even three.

You’ve hit on a kind of emotion that effects lots of people.

You’ve hit on a kind of emotion that effects lots of people. You achieve almost everything you want in life, but then your brain somehow tells you it’s not enough. I think that’s a part of human nature we just have to deal with. Success can often seem random, so despite everything I keep two things in mind: pursue your passion; meanwhile, find a way of providing for yourself that maybe you don’t “love,” but still enjoy.