THIRTY SOMETHING by Ishi Dinim
I’M HAVING trouble these days; sure, life is great here in paradise, yet I’m struggling with what to do next. Things are so marvelous just the way they are, but I know they are changing. I need to carefully figure out my next moves.
As spring approaches, my activity level needs to intensify to use this new time for growth effectively. I need an inspirational way to make money, something that utilizes my talents and gives back to the world. Not that I think I’m above doing any kind of work, but I’m stubborn in wanting a vocation with variation and creative elements where I feel valued.
In one breath, I feel very confident and skilled and then in the next, I grasp at how anyone would want what I have to offer. I’m out of practice and often shy to describe my good qualities to others.
Being able to consider my upcoming steps is a privilege in a world where many people are simply “treading water” or responding to a new crisis. I’m not sure where I’d fit into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but I feel mostly satisfied with my life. The bits that I’m not satisfied with frequently take over my thoughts. It’s funny how often just one small anxiety can make the whole enchilada taste off.
We tell ourselves limiting stories about inadequacy, failure, past history and lack of potential and these can become our narrative about who we are. They prevent us from seeing ourselves as we really are: capable, talented and whole.
I look around at people and their relationship to work and wonder what motivates them. There’s an ethical range to generating an income everywhere, from “Hey yeah, I’ll put melamine into baby food” to “I’m going to replace gasoline with an amazing, sustainable alternative.” Am I naïve in hoping to find fulfilling and lucrative employment that not only doesn’t make the world worse off, but also actually makes it better?
What makes people choose their course? What inspires them? What inspires me? I’m getting into it, with trepidation and excitement. A new future unfolds.
Filmspiration:
Religulous
W.
Quotespiration:
Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.
– Dorothy L. Sayers
Money is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralizing as earth, air and water. Men can employ it as a tool, or they can dance around it as if it were the incarnation of a god. Money votes socialist or monarchist, finds a profit in pornography or translations from the Bible, commissions Rembrandt and underwrites the technology of Auschwitz. It acquires its meaning from the uses to which it is put.
– Lewis H. Lapham
Money does not corrupt people. What corrupts people is lack of affection… Money is simply the bandage, which wounded people put over their wounds.
– Margaret Halsey
Ishi graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2001, with a BFA. He makes films, collects cacti, and ponders many things. Currently he is doing what he can for himself, his family and the planet. contact:ishi@yahoo.ca
