I’m sure you’ve heard about getting outside of your comfort zone. It’s where you learn, stretch, grow. I’ve often thought of Bilbo’s famous quote when I hear it, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” That’s the stretch part. But where is the grow part?
It might have something to do with middle age. I’ve hit several walls lately and done some very mid-life-crisis-y things. I bought a convertible sports car, told an important person (with power over me) he is a #%$&@ dick, and in general care less about pleasing others. Very mid-lifey, as I said.
What I’ve also done a lot of lately is go outside what I thought was my comfort zone. I went to watch a volcano erupt and take video of it from a quadcopter. I traveled more , in country. I changed jobs. I picked up hobbies I’d been interested in for decades, but never pursued. I surfed for the first time last year. I started a novel, several short stories, wrote a treatment for a documentary film. Doesn’t matter if I succeed. I wanted to do it so I did.
I think, however, that the term, “stepping outside your comfort zone” is mistaken. I realized that, as I did these things, I was not uncomfortable with any of them. I was, indeed, comfortable with all of them. I just felt constricted to the role I had and played. People step outside their established roles, the ones that others put them in, not their comfort zones.
All they need is confidence, good friends, and a lot less fear. Call it midlife crisis if you want. I don’t mind.
Hey Sean, It sounds more like efforts to find your bliss, especially as you found them a lot of fun. Reminds me of the famous quote from Joseph Campbell:“Follow your bliss.
If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn’t know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”
I’m following my bliss today in the arts now that I do not have to work in engineering to keep current in a job. I find it lots of fun!
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Not inappropriate. I’m less concerned about the name of it, more interested in the doing of it. But you hit the nail on the head.
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