Seeds to Sow

Farmer with a Pitchfork by Winslow Homer, c. 1874

In thirty days, I turn thirty. Usually I downplay my birthdays, but changing the leading digit of my age is exciting. Over the last couple of years I've joked that I'll finally grow up when I start a new decade (says the man with a good job and a mortgage). But in recent months I've felt that joke turn into real pressure.

I'm not worried about getting old. Everyone else seems to dread it, but I look forward to it. The past ten years have felt like an eternity, and quite frankly I'm ready for new adventures. The question is: what are those adventures?

I have previously alluded to tension in this regard. I have choices to make, and they have consequences for my next thirty years. I'm not looking that far ahead, but it seems to me like at least the next ten will determine how the decades that follow will go. If my dreams come true, at forty I'll have a family and roots and cringes routine. And those dreams come at a cost. How will I be able to afford them? How much of myself and my grander ambitions will I have to sacrifice in exchange?

After I saw the new Avatar movie, I told myself that I'd spend the next ten years putting myself in the position to make movies from age forty to eighty. Maybe that's a career, or maybe just a hobby. But I know I'm interested in making art, and I want to spend time doing that, on my terms, in the back half of life. I realize that to do it on my terms, I'm going to have to bust my ass in the coming years to get there.

I am not made of money. If anything, I have left money on the table in exchange for a relaxed relationship with my work. But that has to change if I want to realize my dreams. It's not possible for me to have it every way. I could either proceed down the path I'm on, and entirely sacrifrice either a family or the pursuit of art. Keep a stable job and have a family, but no resources to make things, or keep my stable job and make things, but not have time and money for family.

But I can do better than a stable job. I'm confident I could jump back on the fast track to management. I know how to play that game, and know the costs and benefits of doing so. I've just chosen not to, either because it would really wear on my soul or because I'm naive enough to think that soul matters in this discussion at all.

There is another option, which is in essence a kind of art in it's own, and it happens to be both the riskiest and most appealling option to me. The question is: am I ready for it?

Being my own boss, and also maybe the boss of other people, means that I not only have to do the work I know I'm good at, but also the work that grates me. This wouldn't be the first time I tried this. A few years ago I had the same aspirations, but the sales and administration components proved too big of a block for me. I am not good at asking for things and I really, really hate paperwork.

Could it be that I just have to grow up? It is not that I'm incapable or otherwise don't understand how. I just haven't had the spirit to give them the old college try. And what I may not make up for what I lacked previously: clear ambition and real consequences.

I think I've also matured in the way I think about running a firm, too. Some better models have come into view, and I'm rubbing elbows with people who have already forged their own paths. Whereas I previously had the lingering feeling that my work was commodified, I now know that I have a unique perspective to offer. That trade means it will actually be more of a challenge to get a firm off the ground, but if I'm successful I would feel more spirited about it.

So, I've gone through the catalog and picked out the seeds. I'm gifting myself a possible future next month, when I put those seeds in the ground. I will spend whatever free energy I have to keep the garden watered and weeded until it bears enough fruit to be sustaining. Maybe that takes just one growing season, or perhaps a few. But I can feel the pull.

The pull towards the life of a yeoman farmer.