For all intents and purposes, most may believe that 2017 was an exceptionally trying year. The political climate has bred contempt, frustration has created disagreement and turmoil seems ever-afoot.
I have found as life grows longer, so the edges get a little rounder, things don't appear so distinctly black and white. Our discontent can indeed give birth to hope. Our loneliness can create a network. The job we lost can create another. The person we strayed from can introduce us to another. The arguments will die, the frustration will subside and things we imagined important will cease to be.
We cannot always control the workings of the world but we are the masters of our perception and our attitude.
The Time We Stopped Arguing
It's 2018 and Facebook is still a thing. I doubt it will live to see 2020. At some point, continually arguing one's point creates fatigue. Social Media is an evolutionary tool that has been wrought in negativity due to false empowerment. Our frustration will, however, birth optimism.
Maybe someone will create a social platform where only positive content is allowed. Maybe people will create it themselves.
There are a thousand trails to the field, we tend to walk one only to get to another without realizing the great expanse before us.
The Business of Art
People who make movies have to beg for funding. People who make music spend grueling hours in the studio, people who paint have pain-staking sessions of brow-furrowing. Even the beautiful things require work; not just discipline and labor but negotiation and excuse fielding.
There is no such thing as a perfect job. There will be wonderful people at horrible companies and horrible people at wonderful companies. Life's consistent element.....
PEOPLE
You can choose to embrace them but if you think you can do it alone you are mistaken.
The Art of Business
The intellectuals will poo poo anyone who enters the workplace in a button up shirt. The corporate population will write off the mindful as hippies. Neither are astute. I know accountants who are creative and yoga instructors who are assholes. There are CEOs who are thoughtful and hippies who are selfish.
I grew up with fortune and a family who loved me. Few are so lucky. That doesn't mean I don't bury my head in my hands every day.
PEOPLE
You don't have the love them but every element of your success relies upon them. Sure, it would be easier to cover up with headphones or pretend to be on a conference call your entire life. But, at some point, you'll have to engage.
More than subject matter expertise or slick talk, people are starved for common sense.
The good news is that it gets easier.
Your control of your life goals and your ability to ignore the insignificant are enhanced by the day. Unreasonable people become background noise and you learn to tend to those who deserve your time.
Don't waste another second debating those who seek to destroy because they have forgotten how to create.
Know that even your hobbies require focus and discipline.
There are artist everywhere who wish not the distinction of wearing paint spattered pants.
Don't Forget to Remember!
Dave
