It seems common to perceive interests as accessories. I know I’m guilty of it.
How much better you’d be if you only knew X. Accessorize to get into clubs, form some buds, get some accolades. Get some respect. Get something to spend time on, a solid transaction for another sand castle memory.
But when it’s ornamental, it’s a schism. It’s you, and then your interest. Until you’re suddenly somehow out of the picture. Until it’s just the interest in this vacuum and you’re directing your energies toward it.
So one begins to fixate too much on the interest.
Then you start seeing the heights by which others have taken their token curiosity.
Then you see the conveyor belt.
Then you wait until you do this as good as X, then Y.
Then you practice until blistered—find oneself dulled inevitably as everything’s already been “done” and there’s no way to wear the accessory with a charm anymore.
Then you hang up your coat because the Interest is better worn by others. Maybe a bowtie better fits you as the chauffeur you’ll always be.
That’s the progression of the Accessorizers. Becoming the mannequin for the heavy trinket to slide right off you.
Unfortunately Accessorizers forget the other half of living: themselves. There’s the Interest, and then there’s You. When you forget the You part, you’re losing the very essence of what makes Interests a vector of exploration and love of discovery. What makes them interesting.
Don’t be an Accessorizer, be a Synthesizer — flip the flow of things. Don’t ask what you need to do for the Interest, ask what the Interest does for you. Ask how it changes you. Where are you taking yourself next with it?
It’s no longer about you and guitar, you and painting, you and writing.
It’s about what guitar does for you, what painting does for you, what writing does for you.
Because that’s how I see it. Interests are something that morph into you. Contorting to it means losing the very purpose, the very reason why you ever bothered to begin with: expression of self, exploration of self. How it changes you, and it’s about taking the essence of who you are and using the Interest as intertwined conduit.
You don’t transform into the Writer, the Painter, the Bard—the Writing advises you, and the Painting delights you, and the music flies you far away from the factory production Interest line.
What do your interests do for you? What have they done for you? What will they do for you?
Becoming an Official Diplomat of your interest is boring.
Get to the story that’s interesting: your story.
What are you gonna do?