Here are few things I recently stumbled upon that I thought were relevant to this post. Posting them here if it's of interest!
First, Ralph Waldo Emerson on the peskiness of discontentment:
"At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from."
Second, @GeorgeSaunders on his writing process and the illusion of the land of contentment:
"The biggest thing I’ve learned over the years has to do with where to look for satisfaction in writing. There’s a very samsara-esque quality to this endeavor (well, to all endeavors, but). That is, there’s a predictable & cyclic quality to it all, that goes like this (and I’m sure this will be familiar to many of you): First, the feeling that I’ve got no ideas, and despair over that (“I’ve lost it! I’m finished!”). Then, an idea comes, or at least a place to start. Is it good? Months of work to find out, and: Yes, it is, or could be. Work, work, work. Finally I finish it, feeling good. Send it out. Maybe it’s accepted. Yay, it is! Ugh, I hope I don’t mess up the edits. But no: the editing process goes great. And now the story is coming out! Will people like it? Some do. Hooray! But wait: I’ve got no ideas.
Then it all starts over again, over and over, until I die at 120, busily enacting one of those phases described above.
So, there’s actually no settled place of fulfillment. And maybe that’s as it should be. What’s happened over the years is that, aware of the above, I’ve gotten marginally better at being content/happy during any/all of those phases, kind of like, “Oh, I’m in that phase now. That’s fun.” It’s still frustrating, scary, sometimes euphoric…but less so, or more controllably so - I can be in a certain phase of the creative process, struggling to move out of it, even as I’m looking over at myself struggling, slightly amused by the whole thing."
I do agree that too many folks make career changes because they're fleeing something without a clear strategy of moving towards something else. Or, they are moving toward fantasy, not anything that relates to what will make them content. I wrote recently about the problem with pursuing passions that are actually just fantasies. https://open.substack.com/pub/jamesrichardson/p/real-passion-emerges-from-expert?r=1mec6y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks so much for sharing this James. Looking forward to reading your thoughts.
Here are few things I recently stumbled upon that I thought were relevant to this post. Posting them here if it's of interest!
First, Ralph Waldo Emerson on the peskiness of discontentment:
"At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from."
Second, @GeorgeSaunders on his writing process and the illusion of the land of contentment:
"The biggest thing I’ve learned over the years has to do with where to look for satisfaction in writing. There’s a very samsara-esque quality to this endeavor (well, to all endeavors, but). That is, there’s a predictable & cyclic quality to it all, that goes like this (and I’m sure this will be familiar to many of you): First, the feeling that I’ve got no ideas, and despair over that (“I’ve lost it! I’m finished!”). Then, an idea comes, or at least a place to start. Is it good? Months of work to find out, and: Yes, it is, or could be. Work, work, work. Finally I finish it, feeling good. Send it out. Maybe it’s accepted. Yay, it is! Ugh, I hope I don’t mess up the edits. But no: the editing process goes great. And now the story is coming out! Will people like it? Some do. Hooray! But wait: I’ve got no ideas.
Then it all starts over again, over and over, until I die at 120, busily enacting one of those phases described above.
So, there’s actually no settled place of fulfillment. And maybe that’s as it should be. What’s happened over the years is that, aware of the above, I’ve gotten marginally better at being content/happy during any/all of those phases, kind of like, “Oh, I’m in that phase now. That’s fun.” It’s still frustrating, scary, sometimes euphoric…but less so, or more controllably so - I can be in a certain phase of the creative process, struggling to move out of it, even as I’m looking over at myself struggling, slightly amused by the whole thing."