My mythology

I struggle with my professional life persona.

Writing this feels like a watershed. The myth of my public persona gets confused in my head with who I am in fact. This is tricky.

So, the myth of my persona (or what I believe I project to the world) is that I care about my professional work much more than I do in fact care about it.

I do care about politics. I care about the future of our country. I care about how little schools have changed--not just during my career, but in the last 50 or 75 years. I care about music--both following musicians--enjoying their talents--and in continuing to grow as a musician.

I care about my relationships with my daughters, with my wife, with my relatives and with my close friends.

And I do care about my work too, but it comes far down the list of things I truly care about.

Having written all of this, it doesn't feel as risky as it did in thinking about writing it. I think about the artists that I admire. Their work is often autobiographical. And it is not all self-congratulatory and does not necessarily reflect well on them as caring people. But it has the ring of honesty to it. And for that, it is rightly admired by me and by many others.

So my mythology is that I care about my work more than I actually do. I actively help every day at work to keep that myth alive, but I am now not so interested in continuing to do so. It takes a lot of energy to do so--energy that is wasted, because it accomplishes nothing except keeping the myth alive...for whom?

I am much more interested in finding the occupation, the pursuit, for which I will care as deeply as the things I mentioned before (music, relationships). It may not exist in my present work (that's my belief).

Allen Ginsberg, after his release from a psychiatric hospital, took a job he hated. He also was seeing a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist elicited from Allen that he was not happy in his job, but felt he needed to keep doing it to pay the bills. The psychiatrist asked him what he would do instead if he left the job. Allen told him that he would pursue his dream of writing. The psychiatrist (thankfully for us....and for Allen) said, "then leave your job. Follow your heart...." And that was when Allen was barely in his thirties. I am in my late 50's. Maybe it's time for me to follow my heart.