{"id":3089,"date":"2015-10-19T12:30:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T16:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/?p=3089"},"modified":"2015-10-16T15:52:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T19:52:01","slug":"feeling-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/2015\/10\/feeling-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/beck-career-path.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3090 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/beck-career-path-1024x472.png\" alt=\"(C) Beck Tench\" width=\"600\" height=\"270\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The following two thoughts cross my mind nearly everyday. When I forget why I\u2019ve chosen to build an unconventional career, they remind me.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first is of my friend, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/36-year-old-seth-vidal-tragically-killed-2013-7\">Seth Vidal<\/a>, who was killed on July 8th, 2013 at the age of 36 when he was struck by a car while biking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The second is of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Upm9LnuCBUM\">Mister Rogers<\/a>, who said, &#8220;<em>You rarely have time for everything you want in this life so you have to make choices. And hopefully those choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.<\/em>&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My time, a huge portion of which I spend working, is limited. Seth\u2019s death and Mister Rogers\u2019s wisdom remind me to never forget that and to choose accordingly. Apologies for being morbid about it, but if I\u2019m going to write about the choices I\u2019m making in my career, I cannot uncouple that from the reality that many of them are made with my mortality in mind. When National Arts Strategies&#8217; Dallas Shelby asks me where I want to end up, I already know the answer is that I\u2019m going to end up dead (o_O) and so the question really is, what do I want to be doing along the way?\u00a0 And the answer to that is that I want to be doing things that make me feel <em>alive<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>But what does it feel like to be alive? It\u2019s like asking a fish what it\u2019s like to be in water \u2014 we don\u2019t consciously know any other state. But, at the same time, we know it when we feel it.<\/p>\n<p>I feel alive when I\u2019m being 100% myself and that\u2019s what\u2019s needed in a particular time and space. I feel alive when I see others act courageously in an environment I\u2019ve made safe. I feel alive when I lose awareness of my own inner voice and am fully present to a person, team, or audience.<\/p>\n<p>Being alive isn\u2019t just the good emotions, it\u2019s also filled with struggle and stress.\u00a0I feel alive when I am present to the fear I feel before a presentation, when I stay\u00a0open to emotions that occur when I\u2019ve failed, when I allow my confusion to be known. That work is just as right.<\/p>\n<p>My career path is one experiment after another in living. I know where the path ends, but I don\u2019t know when or how or what I\u2019ll do along the way. I accept the uncertainty of its trajectory, trust my instincts even when they don\u2019t feel logical, and move towards the feeling of finding and losing myself, again and again. I look at my life\u2019s work as work that will never end. That is until, of course, it does.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=The question really is, what do I want to be doing along the way? @10ch on her career via @ArtStrategies http:\/\/bit.ly\/1PxmRNC %23ArtsCareers\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/clicktotweet.com\/img\/tweet-graphic-trans.png\" alt=\"Tweet:The question really is, what do I want to be doing along the way?\" @10ch on her career via @ArtStrategies http:\/\/bit.ly\/1PxmRNC %23ArtsCareers\" width=\"73\" height=\"61\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nClick on the Twitter logo to share this post. Start a conversation.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following two thoughts cross my mind nearly everyday. When I forget why I\u2019ve chosen to build an unconventional career, they remind me. The first is of my friend, Seth Vidal, who was killed on July 8th, 2013 at the age of 36 when he was struck by a car while biking. The second is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":3090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,23],"tags":[623,629],"coauthors":[647],"class_list":{"0":"post-3089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conversation","8":"category-stories-from-the-field","9":"tag-career-paths","10":"tag-career-planning","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3089"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3102,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089\/revisions\/3102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3089"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}