On Taking Risks

Whenever you start a new job, there's a period of time when you feel very uncomfortable. I remember when I got my first major promotion back when I worked in corporate America, and went from answering the phone whenever it rang to a roving customer service job. I was more important, with greater responsibilities, but I didn't have that constant busywork. Oddly enough, the down time made me feel a little less valuable... as a human... until I got used to it.

I imagine there are a lot of people out there that want to find ways to create value in non-traditional ways. This may mean pursuing something creative or entrepreneurial in nature. My recent forays into the worlds of Van Gogh and Picasso at their respective museums impressed this upon me.

They worked because they needed to work, not because they had a boss or had signed any specific contract. They each had a vision for what they wanted to do and they worked tirelessly at it. Now they both have huge museums dedicated just to them in two of Europe's major cities.

In my, much humbler, smaller-scale case, it's been about four months since I've had a regular-feeling, consistent, day-to-day job: you know, the kind where you show up for work, have a boss and clock your hours on a timecard. Of course, in my career, the jobs are always seasonal anyway, so I'm used to things changing quite often.

But sometimes, when I'm in the midst of working for myself, I feel a little like I did after that first promotion when I was 24 years old.

For example, right now I'm sitting in a Cafe in France. The sun is going down and my feet are wet.

I spent a good portion of the morning shooting timelapse and beauty shots of Paris in the rain. When my camera battery died, I ducked into a restaurant for a bowl of soup and some hot wine (my drink of choice here when it's cold), and pulled out my laptop to edit.

I spent probably three hours editing, and made only a dent in what I need to do for my project.

I then ran back to the hotel to grab my second camera in order to get some sunset shots, charge the first one, and start the transcode process on the morning's shots. The footage is actually gorgeous, it's sharp, 4K video, and Paris can't really look ugly.

So I headed out again to grab a window seat at the corner cafe so I could set up a timelapse of the sunset.

Now, technically I've been "working" all day, but yet it doesn't feel like it.

I've been thinking a lot of Sartre's notion of "bad faith," since I visited his famous writing spot last week, and his ideas about the professional "roles" we play. That of the waiter, the lawyer, the politician, et cetera. The existentialists were after authentic living, of living in to a value that runs deeper than a random role we are assigned, and perhaps this feeling of... I'm not sure what it is, guilt? The feeling that there is something that you are supposed to be doing right now? The need, like the ringing phone in my first job, to have constant validation that you are doing something valuable, or problem solving that which is immediate? Is it a need for security, a contract of sorts between employer/employee that constitutes the promise of steady income for the foreseeable future? It's hard to pin down, but it is there.

But the real question should be: what constitutes ultimate, lasting value? Like, what are some examples of this? What are the sorts of things that we remember, years later and say, "I DID that?"

I'm pretty sure answering phones for a corporation does not, for me, constitute one of those things. Not now anyway. Back then, it was a huge accomplishment for me, moving from a small town, learning to live in the big city, and joining the film business, learning how to move up in that business. What might have been a molehill for others was in fact a kind of mountain for me. These things are often relative.

But as I started to climb the ladder, the feelings of security, the comforts, like the fact that the phone was always there, that people needed me as soon as I clocked in, those become more scarce, because I'm betting on a longer-term play. I'm building something that provides value later on, and nobody is going to say, "good work today," and shake my hand at 6pm.

Perhaps this is just what the artistic life, the creative life, the entrepreneurial life, the hospitable life FEELS like. Not that I'm calling myself an artist (certainly I will
NOT do that two paragraphs removed from a Van Gogh mention), right now I feel sort of like a tourist PLAYING an artist, and the awareness of the risks involved with such a play are perhaps at root in the feeling of out of placeness. But whatever I'm doing, it feels different. Is it, in Sartre's sense, "bad faith"?

I don't think so.

Furthermore, I think you should try it. Find something you want to do, and then do it. That's all I'm really talking about here here. If nothing else, you gotta try. Right?