"Similarly, you are the Gene Roddenberry of your own career path. Either your career is overflowing with your personal magic, or it isn’t. Recognize that if you aren’t there yet, you aren’t there yet. The wrong path is the wrong path. The wrong path doesn’t suddenly turn into the right path around the next bend."
This was a vivid metaphor for me (I actually saw the end credits with his name in my head.)
This is something I've been thinking about
a lot lately in terms of designing the life and livelihood I want, i.e., using
all the powers of my imagination to create images of a livelihood that is unique to my talents, loves, skills, desires, personality, etc.
I usually just do something I do quite well, or well enough, and do it for a while and then say it's not enough and then do something else for a while. I've done research and desktop publishing for a major university and driven a tractor trailer to name just a few of the jobs I've held. I've kind of, as Ilya put it, continuously reached "the local maximum" and then branched out a little (or occasionally a lot) beyond it.
So Steve, how I'm interpreting your article is that we are the centers of our own universes and our emotional journeys help us to stay connected with the energy and imaginings of that. The rating/evaluation process helps us to get from here to there (sort of like enlisting the left-brain to work in conjunction with the right-brain.) This is exciting to me and very, very new to me with respect to the fact that it is really internally generated, meaning one has to be strongly in touch with one's own vision but also in touch with one's emotional journey.
"You deserve to be fulfilled. If it takes you a decade or more to get there, so be it. The time will pass anyway, so invest it wisely. There’s no limit on how many tries you get. Just know that in your heart of hearts, you really want that 9 or 10, and no matter how much you try to deny it, the desire for creative self-expression still burns within you, and you will never be truly and deeply fulfilled until you have an effective outlet for it."
I love this.