Our job

This has been sitting as a draft since November 2010. Figured I'd post it now ...

Steven Pressfield:

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

It's so easy to get consumed by heroes and advice and things you read in books or on the internet, and to get caught up in the game that is self-improvement, working harder, learning more, trying to become more like some of your heroes.

But the real job is in figuring out who you are.

It's a process discovery. It's something you cannot change. It's part something you're born with, part something that's drilled so hard and so deeply into your unconscious as to be unchangeable.

You've gotta find out what that is, and then become that person that you are somewhere inside, somewhere beneath all the things you've been taught to be.

It's something I've always found incredibly challenging myself.

I've always been pretty good at a great many things. Programming. Cooking. Playing the piano. Drums. Photography. Writing. Telling stories. Seeing people's soul.

But which of those things are really mine, and which are "just" some I've learned?

In truth, they're all a part of me, and all of them need to be honored and will probably find a place in my final expression.

If you're not familiar with Steven Pressfield, you should be. He's the guy who wrote "The Legend of Bagger Vance", but his most important work, in my book, is "The War of Art".