Curiosity is not a vision

Since I started my blog last year, I wrote for myself. I didn't care if somebody read what I wrote, didn't even share my writing. This was a great starting point, and helped me to build a consistent writing habit. But now, it feels like hiding.

While I thought about how to continue with my blog, I came across "The Practice" by Seth Godin, a book about how to become a professional creative. In a nutshell, being a professional means to serve others. It means to seek an audience and work towards a change that improves their lives. If you are a professional, your work ceases to be about you and becomes about the change you want to accomplish. After reading the book, I wasn't sure anymore whether I wanted to be a professional.

I started my blog for selfish reasons. I have too many ideas, most of them about things I want to learn. But I find it hard to commit to a single topic, even for a time. So I started my blog to practice exactly that. Commit to one post at a time. The topic didn't matter, what mattered was that I did the work. I picked problems I was having at that time and worked through them. I scribbled about thoughts I wanted to investigate. I even wrote two awful short stories. The idea behind all of that was to figure out what I wanted to work on long-term. And the one thing I'm always coming back to is to "follow my curiosity and never stop learning". This feels antithetical to being a professional. After all, learning about topics I'm interested in is entirely self-centered.

Being a professional requires you to have a vision. A vision is about a change you want to see in the world and a plan on how to get there. It separates the signal from the noise, makes it clear to see what to work on next. It imposes constraints on what to do, because not everything you could do would serve your vision to the same extend. Following one's curiosity doesn't impose any constraints. It's possible to get curious about anything. In fact, the reason why I always come back to this phrase is because I'm afraid of committing to a specific vision.

It isn't entirely true that curiosity doesn't impose constraints. Organizing my life around it requires a substantial commitment. Learning is hard. It requires constantly doing things you are bad at, which seldom feels good at the moment. And it still requires to focus on one thing at a time. But that's not what I did. Instead of creating constraints to maximize my learning, I used the phrase "follow my curiosity" to let me of the hook. I reasoned that following my curiosity means to write about whatever I find interesting at that moment. With that, I justified to avoid any creative constraints, and always picked the easiest writing projects possible. In other words, I used "following my curiosity" to hide.

To see one's curiosity as selfish serves the same goal. Often, when we're doing something for selfish reasons, it can still help others. In the case of learning, explaining what you learned can be extremely valuable. But trying to be helpful invites the possibility of failure. If somebody's reading what I wrote and still doesn't understand the topic, I failed. Being a professional means to show one's work nonetheless. Hiding it behind excuses is the way of the amateur.

The last sentence characterized being an amateur worse than it actually is. If you decide to be an amateur, and simply do something for the fun of it, that's perfectly fine. Even more, it's probably the best way to start something new. But if you want to be a professional and still approach your work like an amateur, that's a recipe for unhappiness.

Once you have committed to being a professional, the question to ask is: What's the next scary step to take? For me, it means to use creative constraints, starting with limiting the topics I write about. It also means to share my writing. So it might be that you, yes, you are finally reading this. If so, thanks for checking out out my blog! I'm stoked about what is to come. Because becoming a professional is hard. But it's also worth it.