I've stumbled across this blog a couple of times in my daily reading. It's a blog by a cartoonist and marketer, Hugh MacLeod. I find it contrary to my view of order in the world that some of the most interesting blogs I read, like this one, like Seth Godin's, are written by people in the marketing profession. Marketers? I've always self-righteously believed that they are nothing more than megaphones for the 'hype machine.' Or maybe my distaste is more personal than that - maybe I'm simply jealous of their relentless optimism. (I tend to cling to my pessimism like the last splintered plank of wood left floating in the ocean, long after the ship has sunk.) So I am chagrined to find myself returning again and again to these marketer's blogs. Despite their profession, these guys have real wisdom which can be applied to much more than business. Go figure. World order re-aligned!

Kidding aside, today I found this post on gapingvoid and it struck a chord, particularly this comment about reinvention:

I believe the capacity to re-invent one's life, one's career, one's business, one's industry etc is not just a nice quality to have. I believe it's an essential survival tool.

I think he's right-on: The ability to reinvent our lives is one of the most important aspects of our survival, not just in a psychological sense, but also in a physical, entirely mortal sense. Simply put, without the instinct to reinvent ourselves, to learn new things, to find new passions, we propel ourselves with greater speed and velocity towards death. Sorry. I know that sounds morbid, but I believe it.

Thirty seems to be a pivotal age for the 'Reinvention Bug.' It's like a pre-mid-life crisis, only without the financial stockpile requisite to buy $60,000 sports cars or whet the appetite of young women looking for sugar daddies. Suddenly, you realize you're no longer a twenty-something, and instead of your entire life being in front of you, like the adult world has always told you it was - filled with so many choices, so much opportunity - a good chunk of it is now behind you, and to the right of you, and to the left of you. But mostly, it's right now, this moment, staring you smack in the face like a 220-pound prize fighter, smoke coming from his nostrils, and if you don't make a move one way or the other, if you don't start fighting back, you're going to get blindsided by the brick fist of indecision. This is the seventh round, brother, and you either start throwing a few punches of your own, or you begin a long and bloody defeat.

For me, the 'crisis' involved several hard realizations: I had not published a novel. I had not gone back to graduate school. I had spent the last five years working a dead-end job in which all that I could ever learn from that job had been learned in the first two years. Somewhere in that time, we had moved to Washington DC, which gave the temporary sensation of 'reinvention,' without any of the long-term positive effects. I answered the call a little over a year ago, started concentrating on new personal goals, and even though I find myself on a similar bumpy road, pot-marked with many more difficult choices, I at least feel like I'm on the right bumpy road, and that the choices are the right ones. It's okay if the road doesn't lead where I hope it will, but it won't be from lack of a compass, damnit.

Which brings me to my main point in writing this: reinvention has to be an internal choice, not an external action. I think there are a lot of actions which seem like reinvention, and which produce the temporary euphoric feeling of reinvention, but in the end, only treat symptoms, like a glorious pain pill prescribed by your doctor. (Oh, glorious pain pills, how I love thee.)

I can think of several things that seem like reinvention in and of themselves, but unless they are the result of some broader change, they're really just symptomatic fixes - changing jobs, moving, getting married, getting divorced, having kids. An example: Leaving Company A for Company B is not necessarily reinvention. But if, in your quest for Goals 1, 2, and 3, you wind up leaving Company A for Company B, then voilá. You're there. The main thing is this: the move shouldn't be the change. It needs to be the result of the change. Therefore, the hard part isn't making the move. It's identifying the goals that lead to the move.

It's not anything new, this point. In fact, it's something my professors used to tell me years ago. I guess it didn't really sink in until now.

Anyway, it's happening now for many of my friends. Everywhere I turn, people I know are reinventing themselves. Not symptomatically, but truly reinventing, at the core. I won't go into detail, because it's their personal lives and they know who they are, but I will say it's nice to see. And it's inspiring to me personally. It casts doubt upon my own treasured pessimism. It's good to be surrounded by passionate people. And it's good to see people you love survive.

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