More on Turning Pro

It’s becoming clearer to me how I am resisting my higher Self. Something inside wants to grow and share the insights as Life hands them to me. Yet I resist out of fear of disappointing other people, I suppose. I fear rejection by my tribe I guess. The irony is that I don’t really join tribes. Even if I had a tribe, I typically quit the tribe before I ever get a chance to disappoint them. And what I avoid most is making a decision about who I am and what I do in life. I fear that if I make this definition of my self, it will be a mistake, and something awful will happen.

I’m not sure what this awful thing could possibly be. I guess the worst is being tortured and killed or something. And somehow making up my mind about who I am and what I do is supposed to lead to this. So I remain undecided. I remain a dilettante. I remain an amateur.

This is where the change needs to happen. I need to realize that my Tribe doesn’t give a shit about what I do with my life. If either of us pisses the other off, we can simply part ways. This has happened a lot in my life. It has never lead to bloodshed in my case. Even if it could, I typically believe in being well armed. So holding off on defining what my life is about makes no sense.

Defining a Self

I believe in on-going course correction. It’s what professionals do every day. So no self-definition needs to stay cast in granite. I can auto-correct as I go.

At this point, I see myself as a wise man, a prophet of sorts, in very small letters. But I seem to have a gift in applying the vision of the higher self to the mundane life. I seem to notice human blind spots. I find myself fascinated by shadow material, both my own and that of my fellow human beings.

I also am a geek. I’m a technical guy–a programmer. I build computers and make them do interesting and productive things.

Further, I’m a journeyman in written language. Err, at least I was supposed to be by now. This is the One Thing I have resisted most in my life I think. This is One Gift that was stronger and apparent when I was younger, but I have not nurtured it. It’s what I have run away from.

Ironically, again, there are a hundred or more shadow versions of this ambition I have pursued in life. My first career was as a technical writer. Not a bad choice. But my commitment to writing as art slid into ocean like a melted glacier.

And yet, here I am writing in a blog. Another blog. I can see now that even this is connected to my aspiration to be a writer. I cannot even neglect this aspiration to blog unless I’m willing to suffer the consequences of ignoring my higher calling. If I resist, the pain persists.

So I am a writer-programmer-philosopher. That’s me. I’m a WPP.