"Perfessional" Pursuits

One week later and my first blog post has been old news for almost as long. It took Michelangelo 2 years to sculpt the David.

I sat down to write this second post—timer set for 5’15”—and did a free write. Then I wrote a rough draft—timer at 30’ 15”. Next time I’ll add more timers: a step in between—timer at 7’ 30”—to write a bullet point outline; and an hour-long timer at the end to edit the rough draft into a final draft. (This one has taken a bit longer to edit.)

The objective of this blog as a whole is to advance both my personal and professional journeys. It is a privilege to be able treat these two journeys largely as one. This is the top of Maslow’s pyramid.

I’m a writer. From clever short stories in 3rd grade, to a presented poem in 12th grade that brought down the house, to my major in college, and all points between and beyond, I’ve always been.

I’ve done a lot of professional writing, mostly via nonprofit grant proposals. Since I’ve primarily worked in education, I’ve never fully immersed myself in professional writing or published much of my creative work. Michelangelo was 26 when he was commissioned to sculpt David. I’m almost 28, but then again everyone’s a late bloomer these days.

I’m just starting on my masterpiece. As I said, the objective of this blog is to advance my personal and professional journey. A requisite of both is to get my writing out in the world. I’m currently searching for jobs around the blooming field of “Content Marketing,” which is writing meant to engage discourse with a target audience. Marketing is creative, therefore this is a great blend of personal and professional interests for me.

Let’s call this balance between the personal and the professional “perfessional pursuits.” This is something we can all aspire toward. How are you achieving your perfessional goals?

I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned so far in the past couple weeks of my perfessional journey. I’ll start at the professional and segue to the personal. (And I was trying to avoid another list…)

1) The World of Writing – Publications are alive and well, but they’ve gotten lean and moved online. I’ve begun to dig. There is a rich and endless world of writing to discover. Medium.com (an innovative blogging site) and Morning Brew (an email news brief) are two good examples I’ve found. There are countless more. The goal is to get a quick, clickable buzz across inboxes and news feeds. Done right, there is money in this method. Yet all this word surfing has made me crave the real thing. I just subscribed to the New Yorker. There is something in paper literature, a part of our cultural soul, that can’t be replaced. Let alone books on shelves gathering dust. (I mean… don’t let them alone. Pick one up and read it.)

2) You Can Learn Anything Online – Remember how Neo and Trinity ask Tank to download skills into their brains? While we’re still catching up to the technology in The Matrix, we have YouTube. I’m currently learning marketing through YouTube videos and another online course. Sure, it’s not the same as college or a Master’s, but online learning can be a bridge to real world experience, which is where the true learning happens anyway.

3) The Process – is key. To master a skill, we need rituals and practice. Say you and a friend challenge each other: who can paint the better picture in a month? You spend the whole month on one painting. Your friend paints a new picture every day and submits her final painting to your little competition. Whose is better?

Nail down the process! Rinse and repeat. With a family this is even more important, because personal time is family time, which cannot be traded willy-nilly for professional time.

4) Perfessional Goals – We’ve all heard “Love what you do and you won’t work a day in your life.” Most of us have to be a more realistic, but this is a nice ideal to strive for. I chose writing because I love to learn, and writing necessitates reading and learning. I also love being creative. If I don’t work in a field with some creativity, either my mind will explode like a scuba diving balloon or my soul will shrivel up like a flower. What is this thing for you personally, and are you keeping it somehow with you professionally?           

5) Self-expression – This has long been the missing piece in my life. I’ve been creative since before I knew what the word meant, but I suppressed a lot of creativity due to internal fears. Even more than writing, I’ve love music. I am a fine musician and have worked with music for several years now. But on the creative side, I have never matched my reality to my dreams. I used to have regrets about that, but if I had pursued music my life would be very different, and I may have never met my beautiful wife Natália and our amazing daughter Olivia, whom I would not trade for the world. That said, here I declare my dedication to self-expression. Stay tuned for more of it! 

In conclusion, I believe it’s about self-love and confidence. I choose writing because it involves creativity and learning; marketing is the professional field where that skill fits. You have to love yourself to know yourself and then give yourself permission to dig into your soul and find the thing that makes you you! Then you must be confident about it. Confidence is a form of intelligence and a form of aptitude. If you love to do something, you’re probably good at it, and you should have the confidence to say, I’m damn good at this this, one of the best in fact, and no one can do it quite like I do, because I’m me. Now I’m gonna take this thing that I love and kick ass, and I’m gonna make some $$$.

Working on it.