I have a flobbity-jillion hobbies.
At least 1/2 of that flobbity makes me happy.
I’m having a hard time choosing a career path.
These are the facts.
I love graphic design, creating things, writing, PR, reporting, radio, reading, gocco and letterpress, almost anything I can call my own project and it usually doesn’t matter what it involves…
My problem is: I’ve been looking for a career that uses all of these and it doesn’t exist.
I’m heading to graduate school and choosing a program has been hell. Graphic design, creative writing, arts administration, RTVF? They all sound amazing. I was afraid that if I chose one, I would feel buyer’s remorse almost immediately and wondered if I could’ve been a contender in one of the others.
After hours and hours of thought and deliberation, I landed on a program and a career that I think will work for me.
With a lot of my hobbies, I have an acute ability to reproduce with a twist. I can take graphic inspiration from somewhere else and make something different with that inspiration. I can recreate crafts from other artists with just enough uniqueness that it’s mine, but the idea came from someone else. I was always struggling to find my own voice in radio. I’m not going to be a-movin’ and a-shakin’ in any of those fields because I’ll never be first. I’ll never have the idea that sparks other people’s inspiration. I’ll never create from nothing.
That’s how I landed on the Creative Writing program.
Writing is the only place I feel as though I can actually create something from nothing. I feel as though I can learn from other writers without spitting up a spawn of their works. I’ve loved writing since I was six. After my energy reserve for all the other hobbies runs out, I always return to writing.
I was talking with Angie about the programs we’re struggling with lately and we both agreed that in the public relations programs at both of our schools, they just never really critiqued our work. I have never had the opportunity to have my work put through the fire to see what kind of a writer could come out the other side. It will likely be brutal, but I want that.
Getting published this past semester was key for me…it was a thrill I had yet to feel from any of the other creative endeavors we’ve set out on. I want that feeling…and I want it over and over and over again.
If you haven’t read Seth Godin’s The Dip, I highly recommend it. The main point of the book is written as, “Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.”
I’m trying. That was my leap into the Creative Writing program – the willingness to be judged and critiqued, the juevos to quit a few things and accept that I’m never gonna be next ___________ and the wisdom to know the difference (wait?).
You won’t be extraordinary as long as you’re stretched across too many activities. Have the balls to be excellent and quit.
