While time flies in your work day, what happens when you start spending a sizeable amount of the rest of your hours at it too? How big of a loss is the outside world... really? This is the final part, in a three-part article exploring some of my thoughts, experiences (and coping strategies) related to the dynamics involved in loving what you do.

Paying attention.

When I notice myself getting super immersed in the work, I feel surprised, and stoked, but also a little wary. Because that scanning-bliss moment was kind of like me and ‘the work’ having a good time together even though we were just doing the dishes. (Sweet, but a little freaky.) Or maybe even cutting each other’s hair with a pudding bowl. (Handy, but "let's never speak of this to anyone", y'know?) And while I do want to harness it (and did), catching this feeling also lets me know I probably need to make sure I have penciled in time for other things in the near future. If not, it means I’m likely to get too involved in what I'm doing, focus on it to the exclusion of other elements of my life, and end up resenting it later through a situation of my own making. I don’t want my work to be all that I do, or all that I am, even if I do enjoy it. I want it to be one of many modes of expression for my varied ideas, visions and experiences.

Photo: From the 1999 comedy, "Office Space".

While time flies in your work day, what happens when you start spending a sizeable amount of the rest of your hours at it too? How big of a loss is the outside world... really? This is the second part, in a three-part article exploring some of my thoughts, experiences (and coping strategies) related to the dynamics involved in loving what you do.

Trying things the other way round.

When you create and invent, or build and grow, or analyse and theorise all day for a living it’s also important to find a balance with activities that fall outside these acts, or even oppose them. To simply absorb, listen and observe, instead of produce. To create, imagine and mentally meander without purpose or direction, or at least without expectation. The places you end up from there, are where the little genius-gremlin-thing writer Elizabeth Gilbert described in her excellent TED talk, probably refuels on pixie dust, even if he delivers the goods back at the desk you show up to each day. The resultant synergy between those other inputs and your professional output, is where the magic leading to inspired concepts happens.

Getting outside your head completely.

It's not just about varying input from within your world either - by say, checking out others’ work in your field or keeping up with news. It’s about varying whole modes of experience-input altogether. Sometimes the most stimulating experiences for your professional life, can actually be the ones where you shut down the usual connections you use in the brain every day, and get into the flow of something utterly different. For me, it’s snowboarding or surfing. I don’t usually come up with ideas for work on the hill or in the ocean, but instead, I find I am at last able to stop coming up with them - and just be both physically and mentally in the right-bloody-now for a while.

Photo: Mount Ruapehu last winter. Copyright © 2008 OWR Studio

Photo: From the cover of "Obsession", a compilation album of rare 1967-74

South American, Indian, and Turkish psychedelic songs.

The other day I realised how lucky I am. I really love what I do. Even the stink bits, apparently. I guess it’s hard once you begin doing your own thing professionally, not to become utterly wrapped up in it at certain points. But while time flies in your work day, what happens when you start spending a sizeable amount of the rest of your hours at it too? How big of a loss is the outside world... really?

Feeling lucky, punk?

See, I recently caught myself in an almost embarrassing moment of scanning-and-resizing bliss - genuinely enjoying one of the more banal and repetitive aspects of my job. My delight in the act of doing something towards the final vision could not it seemed, be dulled by the pedestrian nature of the task at hand, nor the fact that I was doing it back on Xmas Morning. I was just muddling away and loving it. It's not a bad thing in itself for getting things done and all, but I know what this kind of euphoria usually means for the rest of my life. And it might be time to consider it before old patterns emerge. There’s another side to the elation - a severe and abrupt come down called burn-out. Is this love-phase merely the honeymoon period which comes with the thrill of recently starting a new venture, or the beginning of a new obsessive phase of work? And either way - could it be harnessed as something healthily sustainable for the long term? Only time, and the results of my focus will tell in the end, but it got me thinking about the kind of romantic relationship that can develop with one’s work, and when (or if) we should be worried! Does being in love with your work hold its own dangers, and how can we make the most of it, while not getting lost up our own creative um, cul-de-sac?

Endings get a bad rep as something wholly undesirable, but they usually hold a deeper meaning of knowledge, sacrifice and transformation. This is the final part, in a three-part article on endings & new beginnings.

Embrace rebirth.

Privacy’s pretty important to me, and though I’ve enjoyed quite a few written by other people, I thought I’d never personally write my own blog, or ever volunteer to be visible on the web - yet here I am flopping it out. (Am told it’s a good size for its age, but who really knows.) Times change, and the ending of my old ideas about anonymous websistence, has brought with it new challenges, and new opportunities for growth too. This kind of open communication is essential for the business I’ve started, and to where I like the idea of it going over time. I genuinely want to get to know my peers and potential clients from wherever they might appear, so I bit the bullet and started doing something towards letting the world get to know me too. Though I still mourn the times when I could allow my thoughts to wander idly by, instead of mentally copy-blogging the bollocks out of everything as I experience it - I now have a digital space for my professional HQ, and it’s worth it. When endings come, by laying what has gone, (or what doesn't work) upon the altar of transformation, we make it possible to raise the adorable baby Phoenix of our new selves from the ashes.

Photo: An anthropomorphic Aztec brazier, depicting the cycles of life.

Endings get a bad rep as something wholly undesirable, but they usually hold a deeper meaning of knowledge, sacrifice and transformation. This is the second part, in a three-part article on endings & new beginnings.

Photo: Cicada Metamorphosis Copyright © 2009 Hilma Anderson

Change is good.

Why does it so often feel like endings - even simple, rather common or small ones - when they happen to us, are the end of the world? We have all been through many endings already, and looking back they have almost never been a bad thing, no matter what dark fears for the future they gave us at the time. Hey, life started with getting kicked out of the space we’d been in happily for nine months, right? The end of one thing is usually the start of something else, and it’s quite often better. This is true in general, but I find it especially so in my work - whether it’s the end of something functioning as well as it did in the past and the launching of new ways to do it, or the end of a phase of development and the beginning of a new evolution. Change is good. And we’d better believe it - because it’s the only constant in this life, it appears to be completely inevitable, and according to some, might even be speeding up. (Quetzalcoatl help us all!)

Image: Peter's NeverEnding Story: "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do"
from the fourth season of "Family Guy"

Endings get a bad rep as something wholly undesirable, but they usually hold a deeper meaning of knowledge, sacrifice and transformation. Like a Fantasian luck dragon - endings might be bizarre and a bit scary when you first encounter them, but they can sometimes get you out of a heap of trouble (unless you're Peter Griffin). Sometimes even things like healing and hope can be painful too, but they are generally accepted as being "worth it". ‘Endings’ by and large are grievously under appreciated, and they have a whole other side to them which no one pays much attention: the new beginnings they herald.