Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Without chasing














"Excitement is the more practical synomym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase." - Timothy Ferris

Another day has passed, and half the evening is what I have left of this month of September. I have set myself to write, this blog post, and then some comments on an interesting country report for my daytime job.

Yes, my daytime job… I figured out (again) that I need to reduce the hours I work for that job. Should I try the incremental approach, or a dramatic one?

Timothy Ferriss in his book The 4-Hour Workweek suggested that we escape 9-5, live anywhere, and drastically reduce the number of hours we work from 40 or much more to much less.

Income is relative, Ferris wrote, to how many hours you work for it, and he went on to explain how he loves to spend time traveling around the world and mastering new skills. He called these mini-retirements, and he claimed that he has one for every two months of work projects. A paradigm shift, for sure.

I like many elements of his approach, and reading his book is in many ways like holding up a mirror. It helps me to see my situation and options more clearly. Good books can do that for me, or more likely “the right book for the right time”. A bit of both in this case.

It’s a good start if you know what you are good at and enjoy doing, and I have made lots of discoveries in this area over the past few years, so I feel much better equipped in that way. If you can feel excited about what you do, you are much more likely to do your task well, with positive energy helping you along.

I guess that means working on outsourcing the things I am less keen on, and not very good at. Ferris is on the same wavelength, as he wrote that “it is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths in stead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.”


Making sure that the readers got his point, he added that “most people are good at a handful of things and utterly miserable at most.”

I still have 3 chapters to read before I get to the outsourcing part.

Last week I had the good fortune to attend the opening of Jim Paredes’ new photo exhibit called Skin. And as always when confronted with his artwork and his personal genius, I came away feeling stretched and inspired.

Seeing Jim’s work, I reflected how an artist’s struggle (in this case for nude photography) results in the loss of ego which opens up the space to convey something which needs no description.

And I remembered
Gail Sher in her One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers where she quoted John Ashbery as saying that “I think that any true work of art does defuse criticism; if it left anything important to be said, it wouldn’t be doing its job.”

Jim’s art spoke to me in silence as I listened.

Having worked for seven years on the project, I felt as if the exhibit was at once a celebration of Jim’s achievement and a door to exploring new artistic challenges. Completing and moving on are key ingredients in living well, I realized, as I sat watching the exhibit from behind the white curtains drawn discretely over the gallery’s windows.

I imagined myself cocooned for an eternity moment in an inner part of life’s temple. No wonder Jim chose the aptly named Renaissance Gallery to host his exhibit.

Just a few days later, I found myself floating through the lamp-lit corridors of my daytime workplace after practicing on stage after work for the annual charity show. And I realized it was playing music that was lifting me up, as literally as I could imagine.

Another experience to feel excited about, even without chasing for happiness.


Photograph: Lifted up, but still the shorter of the two blues brothers.