The Adrien-naissance

When you live your dreams, you’re answering your soul’s request to be heard.
- Greeting card at the Tree of Life Bookstore,
Center for Spiritual Enlightenment, San Jose, CA

I have been waiting for months to write these words. Maybe years. I am at the advent of some major changes in my life. In the last several months I’ve been consumed by work and I don’t mean my job. I’ve been thinking about the next thing for me. I’ve decided to leave my comfortable job in non-profit property management to pursue what poet Aya de Leon calls “the created life.”

I voluntarily went part-time in September so it should be no surprise to my co-workers that I will be leaving in January. In my spare time I’ve been writing and reading a lot more, all the while marinating over what my next step is.

In a moment it occurred to me that I was already moving in a clear direction like a speeding train. I wouldn’t have gone part time if I didn’t know what for. I spent my free time reading more and writing more because that’s what I needed to do.

I am choosing the life of a creative. I am going to write and make things. I hesitate to call myself a writer or an artist because what I am deciding is not a career choice to me. This is about how I live my life. This is a decision for me to commit to my truth as a creative being and to commit to my vision of the world.

I’ve thought for a long time about how I will leave my entry-level job to do what matters to me. For the longest time I pushed myself to really figure out how to make this work–how could I make some money as an artist or writer? I bought in to the myth of creativity as a difficult life. Only recently I realized I was approaching the situation backwards. I needed to come to terms with my own fear of insecurity. I needed to make doing what I love a priority. I have had financial stability and it hasn’t been enough.

The time is right for me to do this now. I recently checked in with my boss about what I’m planning to do next. She told me “If there’s any time to follow your passion it’s now, while you’re young.” I have some money saved up and I need a break from this wage-slavery. I am ready to make the stupid mistakes I need to do to live the life I imagine. Those mistakes and that life is my birthright.

Some years ago I learned that Allen Ginsberg once told his therapist that he wanted to just quit his day job and write poetry. His therapist told him “Why not?” And he did it. Where would we be without that “Why not?” I have been waiting for my “Why not?” moment to come and it has finally arrived. Only in my case it is now a “You must!” moment. The energy has built up in me as I have weighed every option and found there is only one way to go. I have made the choices. I have expected more for myself and I am ready to give it now.

I am taking a huge leap of faith. There is a lot of pressure–for example, from my parents–for me to find gainful employment. It may not make sense to some people that I am leaving my secure job in the middle of a recession. But I am not making a rational choice. I am making an emotional one. There is something that John Keats called “negative capability,” a way of being in which one “is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” It is taking all my effort but I am arriving into a state of negative capability. I am becoming open to the Right way.

This is one of the most important choices of my life. I know because it has taken me over two years to finally be at the point where I am comfortable with this. I am choosing to create my life on my terms. I am going to do the work that sustains me and meet life head on, come what may.

I have been building up to this. I have only arrived at this point because I have listened. I have thought long and hard, and then I quieted my thoughts and found myself returning to the only way. How am I going to live the creative life? Only one way is clear. Any way is the only way.

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