Loved the article. It is a real struggle for me to stay focused in one direction. People have always told me that I was talented at this and that and that I shouldn't waste my talent. The thing is that they don't realize my talent is one that I think everyone possesses and that is the ability to break something down, study it, and improve. I have loads of interests. I'm not a good artist. I am just stubborn as hell.
Yes people tell me all the time, "You are so gifted." That is one of my least favorite sentences of all time. This is just most people's way of justifying why they can't do something. They would rather believe that they were born without it instead of accepting they haven't worked for it.
How I explain it to them is like this: It isn't a gift. Let's say you go to work and get paid after a period a week or two. When you get that paycheck you would find it weird if someone saw that money you received and said, "Gosh, I wish I had that gift." You would find it weird because a paycheck is a form of compensation for your work and gift is something that didn't require you to do anything.
You ask the great question, "Who are you?". Personally I am a curious observer. Taking in the world and exploring. My goal is to turn that into my profession. The dream is to explore whatever interest I have at the time and share that. To find a way to fund projects and be paid for sharing them. It might be art, music, science, philosophy, or simply storytelling. I think Steemit is an amazing opportunity to grow the support to do exactly that, and meet so many amazing people.
Again, great post my friend.
Let's go by parts: regarding to your talent, maybe many have that talent, I do that as well, but believe me, it is not something that can relate to everyone in terms that it includes all the topics. Let me explain this better:
We both have the talent to break down things, to analyze them, to find ways of doing it better, struggle with it, practice it and getting better at it. What can make you unique about this is how you apply this. Take Jacob Barnett as an example, he has Aspeger and he explains the way of the success related to his studies and projects: He applies this vision of breaking down things until oblivion. And I am talking about just going outside to the park and observe the movement of the trees, the grass, the wind, the temperature and finding patterns Source.
You can do the same in a way that suits you at most (which I recommend to apply it to whatever makes you feel alive and drives passion to you).
It is a problem with the education in general, parents (and institutions lately) are very lazy and really centered into their comfort zones. They just give things away because we have a lot of resources lately and we just don't want our children to insist, so fuck it, give that chocolate to them so they keep their mouth shut, but this is the worst in the long run since they grow up without the meaning of hard work and deserving stuff. Source
And related to the last part, I see a gasp of general concepts that start finding a direction. But they are still too general. You gotta digest them and make them take shape. Set the priorities and work within them. But at the moment, they are a little bit messy.
I think you can work on that at the moment and you will do great.
Good luck buddy =)
Thanks for the reply buddy. I don't really agree with the bit about it not applying to everyone on all topics. It comes down to desire and determination. Most people seek to be entertained rather than entertain themselves. When you live in that mindset there isn't any room to observe, explore, learn, and grow, because you are too busy looking for the next distraction. I believe if those same people turned their attention toward any subject they can break it down. The problem is there is no real desire to.
I'm not sure what you mean by messy in the last part. Life is messy. Existence is messy. You might say that all works in progress are messy.
I can understand having a hierarchy of priorities and how that has importance in real world applications. I can understand not being spread too thin, but to sacrifice diversity of mind and experience to be more digestable in my opinion is a mistake in relation to my particular program.
Maybe it is simply a difference of goals. My goal has never been to be the best this or the best that. My goal is to assess, digest, and express. It is all just variations on an evolving puzzle. If I limit that to one thing I feel like the entire spirit of interest will die in pursuit.
My art has been my main priority for the last year, going from rarely making art to taking it serious and try to make a living. As I'm sure you are aware it takes a lot of work to build it up from nothing. Now that I have a solid foundation for that I have more room to explore my other interests. Now having found Steemit I have started exploring, adding a few other interests into the mix. This is the first time I have thought that there was a legitimate way for me to explore many of my interests in a meaningful way. Now through content creation I a have been shown the potential to have some degree of success in getting compensated for sharing these things with others.
I think maybe what you are referring to when you say messy is a lack of structure, and while that statement might hold a little truth I believe there is structure.......just unorthodox structure. Now I might never reach level 9,000 artistry exploring so many other interests, but I am completely okay with that, because that has never been my goal. I'm just working the puzzle. Really interested in your reply buddy. :)