Wisdom & Working

"They weren't born like that, you know. The self-made millionaires, the now-famous who started with nothing...They learned the skills that brought them to the top, then they practiced, and through practice they changed their behavior — and their behavior made them different people; wholly different. You can be different too — any way you want to be..."

-originally from paragon-athletics

I read this in an e-mail a good friend sent to me about a month ago. Since then I have tacked it up in a cubicle, carried it around as a bookmark (in my Personal History book) and read it nearly a hundred times. It helps me.

The thing is, I've realized that through keeping an on-going list of all the books I've read this year that my most enjoyable have all been either autobiographies or biographies. Even the fiction works I've read all fall into a sort of realistic fiction where something reads as if it could have happened. But, what's more important is that it's through seeing my enjoyment in reading real-life stories that I've come to want to live a life worthy of recounting (slash I've always wanted that, just affirmation). It seems unfortunate to me that many people lead lives that (perhaps I unfairly judge) seem mundane to me. There's a sort of rhythm to life I've noticed as evidence in taking the Chicago Metra train to work every day. People sit in the same spots, wear the same self-given or office-given uniform and talk about their lives by the copy machine, how their significant other is being difficult, how they wish they could take off the afternoon, skip out early on a whim and go on a trip to Lake Geneva. I never wanted the pinnacle of my day to be leaving work.

See, I figure if you're going to be somewhere for 40 to 60 hours per week, you should like it. Maybe that's a development akin to recent years of easy-living for the under 30s, but I don't care. Why shouldn't you like your life away from and at the workplace? It seems a bizarre notion that every day, in order to be productive, has to be recounted in an excel spreadsheet with a regimen that looks, feels and is exactly the same.

Fortunately for me, I've been able to surround myself with people that have higher hopes, and more so, expectations than that — and even still the ability to carry out those passions. Thankfully after sending out an e-mail letting friends know I was leaving behind Cubicle City for some fresh air, I didn't receive any "Are you insane?" messages back. That's just a testament to good friends, good character and like-mindedness, that unfortunately many aren't accustomed to.

History (see autobiographies and biographies) has time-and-again proved that real success doesn't come from sitting on the sidelines. Waiting out the big dogs. Or sitting in a cubicle waiting for someone to give you the go-ahead. I don't want to keep my head down and act natural. There's something to be said for biding your time, but there's also something to be said for knowing what you want, and knowing what you don't want. And if you can be decisive, then be that.