Work

Happy Anniversary North Carolina Outward Bound

10/19/2017 by John Leave a Comment

A crew mate and I beginning a night paddle while on the semester course in Everglades National Park.

I am back in Asheville this week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the North Carolina Outward Bound School. When I arrived at Table Rock in the fall of 1996 to be a student on a semester-long course, I was 26 years old and utterly adrift. I was depressed, unsure of myself, and where I fit in. Eighty-something days and hundreds of miles hiked and paddled later, I awoke on a mountain in Costa Rica with a sea of stars overhead and something I don’t think I had felt in far too many years: possibility. After years of being asleep, my eyes opened to the wonders of the world around me, and the realization that I can do so much more than I ever imagined. Outward Bound not only taught me how to live, it taught me how to be alive.

Thank you North Carolina Outward Bound, and Happy 50th Anniversary.

I Am A Multipotentialite

09/09/2017 by John Leave a Comment

I want to play guitar, be a published writer, a web designer and developer, a vegan chef, train for another ultra, read lots of great books, become an ACA certified sea kayak instructor, practice meditation, etc, etc, etc. “Follow your curiosity” says Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert. I like that advice except for the fact that it has me running in many directions at once. I am curious about so many things. Did I mention I want to learn Spanish? And how to be a better bicycle mechanic?

My curiosity is my strength and my weakness. I am always seeking to learn something new, but my attention wanes quickly when something else interesting appears. This trait has made my knowledge base broad, but not particularly deep. As it stretches me in new directions, it also keeps me confused about which way to go.

Recently, I found a word that describes what I am. I am a multipotentialite. From Wikipedia, “multipotentialites generally have diverse interests across numerous domains and may be capable of success in many endeavors or professions, they are confronted with unique decisions as a result of these choices.” Unique decisions? Try analysis paralysis. With so many things I would like to do, how am I supposed to choose? And then there is the question of how do I find a fulfilling work life when so many things seem attractive to me?

This fall, I am trying to figure out how to combine my diverse skills and interests to create meaningful work. I am reading How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up by Emily Wapnick. Though I’m not through with it yet, so far it is proving to be helpful. As much as anything else, it is nice to know there are others out there like me. For too long, I worried that there was something wrong with me because I could not “find my passion”, that oh so damaging piece of self-help advice that just doesn’t work for everyone.

Maybe you have not “found your passion”. Maybe you never will. Maybe you too are a multipotentialite.

Update from Portland: A Fresh Start

09/01/2017 by John Leave a Comment

One of the beauties of living an untethered life is the possibility to make a fresh start on a regular basis. Every few months (at the most) for the past few years, we have changed locations, jobs, or both. Though there are plenty of challenges associated with this mode of living, right now I’m feeling grateful for the opportunity to once again reinvent myself.

I’ve been living in Portland, Oregon for just over two weeks now. Mary is working a 13-week travel assignment at a local hospital and I am…not sure what I’m doing. For me, it feels like a chance to think about my work life, and decide if it is still working for me instead of me working for it. Other than travel for fun, we have stayed on the East Coast since we stopped living full-time anywhere in 2015, and that has meant that I was able to pick up enough work with Carolina Tailwinds and North Carolina Outward Bound to keep me busy. But now, that work is an expensive plane flight away, making the income not worth the expense. But more importantly than that, I have been feeling the urge to make some changes for a while now.

There have been times in my life where I have felt stuck in a rut. The deepest one I fell into was a period while I was still living in Tuscaloosa four years after finishing my four-year degree at The University of Alabama. I knew I needed change, but I did not know how to make it happen where I was. I needed a fresh start, and fortunately, I was able to find one at Outward Bound.

I feel like I am at a similar point in life. I know I want to alter my work life, yet I’ve found it difficult to make it happen while it has been so easy to keep doing what I’ve been doing. Sometimes, I need a radical shift to happen in order to spark change in my life, and right now, being in Portland feels like it could be such an event. So here I am, with an opportunity to try something else.

So what will I do with this fresh start? I don’t know, but I’m open to ideas…

Anyone?