We’ve gone and done it now. A few stitch markers and cards up right now, more to come as we work out the kinks.
I’m going to be moving knitting posts over to the ArtFire blog, just to have some content there. Which makes this personal and research I guess, mostly. Maybe. We’ll see. This is not an exact science.
It might be a simpler shift than I thought. Rather than “Do the thing you love”, it’s “Do the thingS you love.” There. Done. Clearly not demanding you sacrifice all on the altar of following your dreams.
One of the things that kept me from blogging for a very long time was the fear of being open. I am still trying to keep the cautionary tales in mind: future employers, rabid stalkers, concerned relatives all might someday read these posts. (Sometimes it’s hard to keep this in mind knowing that almost no one sees these posts (hi, Leah!), but nothing every dies on the internet, so what I say here is public even if it’s drifting in the murky backwaters behind the sandbar under some fallen logs).
But I think I want to be the kind of person who is reasonably transparent. If you want to know what I think about certain things, why not? If you don’t like it, well. At least you know where I stand. If you can’t stand to work with someone who believes X—let’s get that out of the way now, shall we? Because I’m not capable of arbitrarily changing my beliefs and it’s poison to pretend.
If a future employer is going to be annoyed that I have hobbies other than what they’re paying me for and that I spend time on blogging which I could spend on Something Else—well, then. Either I have a record that speaks for itself or I don’t. Avoiding things I enjoy and that help me get better at things I love for fear of a hypothetical cranky future employer with an attitude problem and a morality that I am fundamentally opposed to? Maybe not such a good idea.
The random targeting of outspoken bloggers, particularly members of marginalized groups, still gives me pause. I have some very strong opinions, some guaranteed flame-war bait. I haven’t quite decided what to do about those. I think they’ll out eventually, but those posts will likely require drawn-out editing and careful thought. I want to be able to stand by them, even when I change my mind.
Obviously I’m posting now, and eventually I’ll be forwarding my official department page here. I might rearrange things so that the research posts come up by default, but these others ones are still going to be there. Here I am. What you bother to read is up to you.
Not that I’m encouraging family members to join Ravelry, mind. One step at a time. But if you’re on there and want to know what this knitter has to say in a less public place, feel free to PM me.
I’m working on believing that “because I want to” is fully adequate justification. It turns out that this is more conducive to being a kind and productive person than relying on “because I should.” Convenient, that.
If I (or those around me) ever think it’s getting out of hand, I’ll *then* work on reigning it in with some do-no-harm or Golden Rule modifier. But since part of what I want is to be light in dark places (besides being warm and fed and happy myself), it’s best left unmodified.
I’ve been listening to an audiobook of 168 hours and I have to say it is my current favourite of the genre. It has led me to ponder some misconceptions I’ve had about work, work/life balance, passion, etc. (I also have realized that organization and time management and self-help (of the practical and science-based kind) are another hobby of mine. Hence the categorization of this post. Optimization and studying systems . . .)
Anyway, I discovered that I’ve misunderstood two aphorisms: One, that you should follow your dreams (a.k.a. do what you love). Two, that happiness and satisfaction and passion are key to being good at what you do.
First, on following your dreams. Misunderstanding this is not totally my fault. The way it is presented is usually: Quit school and start a crafting business! Move to New York to become a writer! Enrol in acting classes! Lock yourself in your garret to paint! Identify what your dream is and then drop everything (including practical considerations of money, location, and time) to follow it in the most obvious instantiation.
So I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t particularly want to move to New York. Or quit school, for that matter. Or even spend every free moment writing. I happen to love learning and want to spend time on that, too. This led me to conclude that I wasn’t really dreaming of being a writer. There was no dream to follow because if I really wanted it, writing a novel (and getting it published) would be a consuming passion. Thus a more prosaic career path was my calling, and I’m all for people following their dreams if they want but I really hate not having money to pay the bills so that’s not for me.
Now, the other side: passion, finding your core competencies and what makes you excited. This misunderstanding is almost entirely down to my own peculiar (but not unique) tendency to downplay happiness. I conflated this with “Bloom where you’re planted” and twisted it into a stick, a demand to muster up passion for whatever I’m doing or else. In order to be good I had to be passionate and excited. A rather serious misordering: “you need to be passionate about what you are choosing to do.”
This, combined with twisted ideas about what I was allowed to be passionate about, turned disastrous and nearly drove me out of work I adore. Because surely being a researcher meant always thinking only about the topic you were researching, not this more general desire to Learn! All! The Things! (and then connect them). And definitely being a researcher was about successful discovery, not clear communication. Real (computer science) researchers were passionate about proofs, or programs, or scribblings on the whiteboard or maybe even hardware design. Not crafting sentences, not absorbing ideas (at least not without immediately turning them to work for your own ideas). And so on. I don’t think I could possibly uncover all the strange gotchas in my head that meant what I loved and was doing and feeling Didn’t Count. You can blame some on poor teaching or a restrictive “Protestant work ethic’’ or the disconnects in society about success and happiness. But the end result was that I would hear “passion leads to quality” as a criticism of my obsessions rather than a pointer for what to pursue. And it would mix with the “if-I-really-loved-this-I’d-love-only-this” interpretation of “follow your dreams” and it would all mean I was judged and found wanting.
Both of these skews miss the point that the key thing for making decisions is finding out the trivial and vague and recurring things you love. Not your dream in some epic sense (I am but the mistress of my muse) or in the sense of finding the right career label (I was born/called to be a Teacher) but in the sense of “Hey, I like reading. I am enjoying this. I like petting this cat, too. Isn’t the sun lovely?”
I can find some broad categories that I love (and am good at), but I get to them from looking at the specific things I enjoy, not decreeing that I-Am-Researcher-This-I-Love. I know that I love looking into (some) things, whether it’s what fibre to use for hypoallergenic wicking socks or the underlying causes of schizophrenia. I love experimenting (sometimes), whether with new craft materials or new update functions for my learning agent—both different cases of trying something out and seeing what happens. I love inventing things, from the helpful (I hope my knowledge representation research is promising for artificial intelligence) to the ridiculous (I tried to design a sock knitting machine but gave up because sourcing the parts was going to be a pain). I really like trying to explain things to people and understand other points of view. I like trying new things and I love creating things with my hands. Tiny things, especially. But not everything. I hate sewing, although sheet metal work is awesome.
None of these counted in “follow your dreams” or “be passionate about what you do” edicts because they weren’t real career-type things. They are not on anybody’s criteria for career inventories. But they keep coming up in my life, and I keep coming back to them. Sure, these could roughly fall under “researcher” when I target the general statement. But if I focus on the role, I try to shoe-horn myself into my preconceived ideas about what a researcher should be, rather than bending the role to my many loves.
So it turns out that paying attention to what I’m enjoying NOW, in this moment, might be extraordinarily more important than what career I feel a strong affinity for or which program is most appealing. Why is this a strange thought to me? I’ve spent decades pondering career choices, and I’m thinking that time would have been better spent exploring and enjoying(although it was inevitable that I was doing that all along as well, to give myself *some* credit). The career guidance surveys that suggested poultry veterinarian, concrete sculptor, dentist all seem irrelevant now. This is what I’m really doing: grad school, AI research, writing, developing a home-based business, selling tiny things. There’s an odd man out there. But they’re what I love.
Life is strange.
or: Yet another way to get rid of writer’s block
This focus on sitting down and just writing, doing the best I can do with what I know now, can be seen as a switch from product to process. I don’t start by wondering about which section I’ll get done or principle I will refine. I start by breaking out the laptop and sitting down. And no matter what I actually do with the document—editing, free-writing, making diagrams, tracking down reference—progress has been made. And I know progress will be made tomorrow. So I will end up with a product although I never have to think about what that will be.
I think this is an advantage. Surely sometimes I need to think about the product I’m making. But it comes down much more to act of writing itself than the plan. And it stops me from tripping up over not knowing what the final product will be, or if this outline is really going to work in the end, or if this paragraph is necessary. If I have doubts about one area, work on another. If it ends up cut—oh well. It all works out in the end.
Jumping off the cliff before it’s in sight, in Julie Cameron’s terms. That’s what undue focus on product results in.
Very related to “just do the next thing” but I needed an extra jolt to get out of product-fixation.
Is the life where winning the lottery, finding out I had a terminal illness, or being given the opportunity to do exactly what I wanted to for a week wouldn’t change my plans.
Luckily enough, I think such a life is possible. Eudaimonia, indeed.
I just agreed to be on a panel about IT careers, to talk about my research. The audience is 40 Girl Guides between 11 and 17. So I got to thinking about what I found interesting at that age, which reminded me of when I decided science was for me.
Our school had a career day where they brought in a pretty wide range of people to talk about their jobs, and you picked which ones to go to based on the descriptions. I signed up for the High School teacher, Ducks Unlimited, and Marine Biologist sessions. There must have been others, but those are the ones I know. Teacher/scientist were always careers high on my list, and of course I wanted to swim with the dolphins. I blame (or thank) Madeleine L’Engle for that.
The thing I remember about the Marine Biologist was her showing a picture of a dolphin and then saying: “Yeah, we don’t really do that.” She went on to describe her research into algae. I remember pictures with dirty gallon buckets of goo and blurry Erlenmeyer flasks near lab-coated figures and a research station perched on a cliff with sea-spray drenching the windows. I remember the enthusiasm in her voice when she talked about the algae. I don’t remember many details, but I remember being convinced at the end of the day that research was for me.
So I’ll probably draw on that when I’m putting together my talk—say something about all the many interesting areas of AI research, but talk about my project and what I do each day. Maybe someone will recognize that even when it doesn’t involve magical portals and swimming with dolphins, research can be exciting and engrossing, a perfect career for them. And if not, they’ll at least see someone who loves their work.
The problem with being a night owl and starting work very late in the morning or early in the afternoon is that it’s late evening when it’s finally done. This is one of those irrefutable constants that still manages to surprise me, along with the saltiness of the ocean and how much faster it is to knit for babies than adults.
Try it out. Write it down. It’s the only sure way to know if it will work or get it out of the way if it isn’t going to.
I’m going through old notes and seeing how I tried a historic approach, a controversy story, a philosophical introduction—tried and ultimately rejected. But I didn’t really know what would work and what wouldn’t until I had the attempt on the page.
So, for future reference: just write.
I’m sensing a theme.
© Anna Koop & Joel Koop
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