tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2581786318833236127.post9160509115138217151..comments2024-03-03T12:54:43.666-08:00Comments on The Unforced Life: Why I'm Happywww.GeneBurnett.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06942629399894224165noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2581786318833236127.post-21772134712385078442010-11-17T21:27:50.557-08:002010-11-17T21:27:50.557-08:00Something else: I found the life I'm living by...Something else: I found the life I'm living by following what I call "the most deeply right feeling". If something felt wrong I'd stop doing it. <br /><br />For instance, I got a massage license and practiced massage in Seattle for several years. But it just didn't feel right. I gave it a real serious effort but It just wasn't my thing. So by trial and error, going by that feeling, I found a life's work that involves solving the kinds of problems that I like to solve and that I feel good at solving. <br /><br />What I wish is that someone could have framed things the way I have above, to me, when I was younger, in high school for instance. I never saw different kinds of work as involving different kinds of problem solving. I just saw tasks that I thought I'd like or wouldn't. But I didn't think about exactly why I wouldn't like them. I didn't put it together that some jobs involved solving problems that I didn't like solving or thought that I wasn't very good at solving. <br /><br />I think it would have been valuable for me to have looked at the life ahead of me as choices about what kinds of problems to solve, rather than choices of what I'd "like". <br /><br />And "problems" isn't the best word for what I mean because it sounds perhaps that I'm making life a bunch of "problems" in the usual every day negative sense of "issues". <br /><br />I mean problems like a basketball player who has with two guys covering him and 3 seconds to shoot the ball or lose the game, or the problems a school teacher might have getting through to a difficult but promising student, or the problems a writer might have bringing the final chapters of novel "home" in a way that works best, or the problems a waiter might have juggling an extra table into their routine, or the problems a massage therapist has deciding where to start and where to finish and how much time to spend in between, or the problems a songwriter has making the words and melody of a song work together... <br /><br />As I see it, all work, no matter how pleasurable or not, involves problems and solutions. And looking at work that way can be very useful and educational. And hey, in my case, better late than never!www.GeneBurnett.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06942629399894224165noreply@blogger.com