Monday, June 25, 2007

A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

There are many philosophers and theorists that state that life is a journey. The typical play on that is that life is a journey and not a destination. I tend to subscribe to this theory but I believe that life is like a highway. (Go ahead and sing some of the Tom Cochrane song lyrics.)
But as you travel down your highway of life, there are many off ramps and interchanges that can lead you in different directions. I think it is these forks in the road that you come to and you have to decide which road to go down.
I think it is human nature to look back on those choices and wonder which different direction your life could have taken. The three big choices that change your life probably come down to spouse, children, and career because these choices invariably have the biggest impact on your life or—in keeping with the metaphor—have the biggest interchanges. It is these three moments that you look back and wonder how your life could have been different.
Here very recently, I have been considering my career path. I feel that every person has a destiny. Typically this destiny is often associated with your career because, let’s face it, in American society—more often than not—you are what you do. I do not personally feel that this is the case.
I think that a person has to find their destiny and that is what brings them to happiness in their life. Unfortunately, no one can tell you what your destiny is. That is something that you have to discover for yourself.
However, there are the lucky few—that small percentage—that discover their destiny and are able to make a living at it. Those people are the truly happy. They don’t ask for vacation time. They don’t dread getting out of bed in the morning to go to their daily grind. No, they leap out of bed both happy and excited.
I am on my way to becoming one of the bed-leapers. Unfortunately, the paychecks from writing comic books are not substantial and frequent enough (yet) for me to become solely dependent upon them.
I currently have a full time job to pay the bills but I consider it my second job and writing is my first. And in the words of every bong-smoking hippie from the ‘70s, “What a long strange trip it has been.”
Remember how I said that life is a journey and decisions you make take you down one road instead of another. I like to think that writing comics was (and is) my destiny. In a way, I don’t like that word because it makes it sound like I didn’t have a choice. While the pull of writing has been impossibly strong (imagine it like the four-lane highway), there were many off ramps that I could have taken to take me off my path.
I think anyone who works in a creative endeavor often looks back on their lives and wonders about the choices that they make (both big and small) and wonder what might have been and what could have been.
I have turned down opportunities and offers and paths that could have lead me in a different direction but in the end, I think that pursuing my dream will make me happier and in the long run that makes me a better person.

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