Foreword: I began drafting this back in January. My daughter had just had her first birthday, and I had just had my 31st. I was thinking a lot about what’s next in my career, had just read some really amazing stuff on Lateral Action and Gapingvoid, and Linchpin came out about the same time. Linchpin really resonated with a lot of what was on my mind, and in many ways it helped crystalize a lot of those thoughts. Seven months later, though, I’ve just been busy *doing* stuff without really taking another real look at the big picture. Now, with a move coming up, I am about to have my own dedicated office and studio space, which will allow me to really dig into what I want to be doing: creating my own non-conformist life of *making.*

If you’re like me, you’re a non-conformist by default. You don’t try to be weird or unconventional, but it just happens. You get all these crazy dreams, wild ideas about something like making a living from painting stuff, and sometimes it feels like no one supports those dreams since they’re scary and “not safe.” (I now know that comes from the lizard brain.) It seems the pressure is on to conform to everyone else’s idea of making a living: go to work for a Big Company with great “benefits.”

I have nothing against working nine-to-five. There’s nothing wrong with benefits, either. But I certainly don’t want to be a clock-watcher, and I certainly don’t want to take a job with more pay and less joy just because it’s more pay. (I know, joy is an internal thing, but that’s beside the point.)

Here’s where the Generation Y part of me speaks out: I want a healthy balance of time with my family and time spent making a living. I want to work to live, not live to work. Too many people have it the other way around. I remember when I spent Christmas break 1998 working at Toys-R-Us. I came home exhausted, and my parents said, “Welcome to the Real World.”

I don’t think the Real World has to be that way.

At the risk of being a deranged lunatic (like our friend Eric above, drawn by Hugh McLeod) I want to be able to work just enough to enjoy life and have money saved up to provide for my children when I die. I want to enjoy the work I do. Is that too much to ask? No. And yet… as that Lateral Action post points out, the lunacy is in expecting the world to adapt to him without doing anything for the world first. Eric has it backwards. In some ways I have it backwards, too. I want to change that. Here’s what I want to do:

I want to do work that matters.

I want to do work that touches people’s hearts.

I don’t want to be a “Sunday painter.” I don’t have time for hobbies. I have a war to fight.

Life is too short to spend it in a way that doesn’t create any sort of lasting value.

I want to create value. Meaning. Logos.

That logos in me is crying to get out, get on the canvas, get into people’s hearts. As long as I’m living a conventional life, I’m afraid it’s never going to get out, and it will wither up and die.

I’m tired of deferring my dreams to everyone else.

I’m gonna do this, whether I have support or not. To the naysayers who say I can’t do it, I say, “Watch me.”