Other Interests: pursuing your passion

Changing careers

Take Two (a US NPR feature via The Occupational Adventure) features a range of people who have changed jobs.

On a similar theme, JD Bliss' Success Stories features lawyers who have changed careers or who have added other things into their legal practice to achieve personal satisfaction.

These stories are always interesting; they may not always be applicable to your circumstances but do demonstrate the inventive ways people can change or improve their lives.

Can you get paid for creative work?

Gaping Void has a sex and cash theory: "The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills."

To me that is a fairly cynical approach. I'd like to think that if your life is a circle,  you can adjust the size of the slices to match your priorities. Ultimately you can arrange things so that you get paid for the "sexy" work.

Passionate books

I've been catching up on reading lately and there's no doubt that the books which reveal the writer's passion for their story (whether fiction or non-fiction) or show an authentic "voice" were the ones that retained my interest.

The surprise packet has to be Bob Dylan Chronicles Volume One.

It is written in a straightforward, modest voice which is at its most passionate when discussing folk music and folk singers.

There are sections which foreshadow his break with the folk movement and give insight into his recording methods but the most revealing section is when he discusses his efforts at privacy for his family once he became famous.

He recounts his transition from tradtional folk songs to Woody Guthrie songs, his search to hear other singers and learn from them  and his first tentative attempts to write his own songs.

He passionately disclaims any desire to be a protest singer. But it is clear he was passionate about music even in his "lost" years.

Five out of five guitars!

Creative Thinking: where do your best ideas come from?

IdeaChampions' When & Where Do You Get Your Best Ideas? survey was probably designed as a bit of fun but is worth completing.

For me, I need to get up from my desk and have a walk around/break every hour or so. This does not mean that my mind is functioning at its optimum for an hour at a time but a stretch can give it a kickstart. I understand in fact that our mind's span of concentration is much shorter.

Dave Pollard in How to Save the World used the survey to start his own analysis.

Jason Womack from David Allen Company has this post on Idea Creation and Execution (via the Innovation Weblog). He finds that coming up with ideas is different from executing them and uses "different tools and strategies to enhance the quality and quantity of ideas I have, and the project outcomes I manage."