The Challenge of Staying Interested — in the LONG Term

My perspectives and approach to life have changed a lot in the course of my life.

I remember being at University. and my primary ambition was to find "a relatively simple and stable job" that I could just do for the rest of my life, well enough that I could live modestly — or even austerely — until I was maybe 50-55, and then retire and purely live off the yields on my investments.

Extreme close-up of a marigold flower

I suppose my view of the world was naively simplistic, but that was only part of the picture. My view of myself was also naively simplistic.

In my early 20's, I felt that my ability to concentrate and focus was pretty strong, and that I could stay on-task better than most people around me.

The part I had not yet become cognizant of was the fact that this "staying on task" was really dependent on that task being somewhat interesting to me... and thereby being blind to the fact that most "work" in his world is actually much closer to eternal drudgery than it is to being interesting.

Plus, of course, you have to deal with employers and managers who operate under the iron-clad assumption that their way of doing something is the "right" way. Which it may not be, much of the time.

Small "passenger" on a daisy

The reality of that last observation really set in when I was starting to work after University and workplaces were always claiming that attention to detail was a really important attribute in their hires... and yet, what their real objective seemed to be was "churn it out as fast as you can, in workable condition."

While working in the IT industry, I soon enough discovered that "doing a great job" took the back seat to the eternal contest of "rising through the ranks," and I soon enough bumped my head against the reality that I just wanted to do the work, not become a manager.

You see, I was an excellent technical writer, but I had zero interest in being a manager whose primary job was to oversee and negotiate the chaos that is people management, rather than doing what I was really good at. I don't want to be in charge iof people; people should be in charge of themselves.

Of course, that is also not "How Things Work."

Leaves in the sun

Of course, this all happened more than 30 years ago!

I became self-employed and set out on the new challenge of trying to discover what it was that was interesting enough that I would want to do it for the remainder of my adult life, while also being something that I would be able to make an actual living at.

All these years later, I am still casting about for the answer to that question... and resigning myself to the reality that finding the sort of "work" you occasionally read about people feeling completely immersed in and passionate about is more like winning the lottery than something you can deliberately set out to create.

Of course, I say that with the caveat that my interests have seldom held much mainstream appeal... and even going back to grade school, I was eternally "that weird kid in the corner," rather than part of any — even modestly — popular groups.

Wildflower in our yard, last summer

Meanwhile, it feels like we live in a society where "the long term" has become less and less important, instead giving way to lives made up of an eternal string of 256-character tweets, with no particular focus.

Even writing a blog post such as this takes "too long" both from the creative standpoint, as well as from the reading standpoint.

Maybe long-term thinking has become largely obsolete...

Thanks for visiting my blog, and have a great weekend!

How about YOU? Are you a long-term thinker? How do you stay interested in something, in a world of constant change? Is it even necessary to do so? DO leave me a comment — engagement matters! Communities are built because people INTERACT with each other through the content that's created! This is SOCIAL media, after all. So share your opinion, be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer all worthy comments!

Sequence: 088 — Timestamp: 2025.02.15 - 10:2 PST

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