{"id":447,"date":"2015-06-20T22:32:26","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T05:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amberbird.com\/blog\/?p=447"},"modified":"2016-05-17T18:25:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T01:25:26","slug":"not-ashamed-ambitiously-pursuing-my-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amberbird.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/20\/not-ashamed-ambitiously-pursuing-my-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Ashamed: Ambitiously Pursuing My Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already, please read the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amberbird.com\/na\/na-intro.php\">introduction post<\/a>. That will give you context for this page.<\/p>\n<hr width=\"50%\" \/>\n<p>Ambition has its pitfalls. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to pretend it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. For the sake of fulfilling ambitions, people have lied, cheated, stolen, and done all manner of other immoral and unethical things. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve thoughtlessly ruined relationships. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lived with only their own personal glory in mind.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not here to say that all ambitious pursuit ought to be free of shame. Nope. I fully advocate shame for some people and the way they pursue what they do.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve examined both my dreams and my intentions. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just know what I want, but I also know why I want those things. And I see no shame in wanting success with my music or my writing, nor do I see shame in the reasons I want that success. (I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t elaborate here, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a list of reasons, and they have nothing to do with personal glory.)<\/p>\n<p>There are two ways in which my pursuits of my ambitions are seen as a reason for shame, in addition to the reasons listed in my rock musician and scifi writer essays.<\/p>\n<p>First, some people look at what they see as the personal cost of my pursuit. Working hard takes time and resources. How can I \u00e2\u20ac\u0153waste\u00e2\u20ac\u009d those on what I do? As I explain, I believe that talents are like divine callings. If you have a talent, there is something you are meant to do with it. I think that the purpose doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just vary talent to talent, but person to person. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done what I can to figure out how my talents are best spent. And, in the past, I <em>have<\/em> tried to live a life where I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give that my all, but spent my time and resources on more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and less-criticised things. I felt&#8230;hollow and incomplete.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take lightly the impact of my actions on others. I try to be mindful. But I also recognise I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it perfectly; none of us can make it through life without causing some upset, hurting some feelings. I do my best. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry that not everyone approves. But I feel no shame. (The only time I feel shame, a shame that sits deep in me and can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be talked away, is when I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give everything I can to making the best of my talents. And then I am miserable. So those whose judgement seems rooted in the fact that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not social with them as often as they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say you either aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a true friend\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcos you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather I be miserable so you can hang out with me\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t thought this through.)<\/p>\n<p>The other way in which my pursuits are seen as a reason for shame have specifically to do with the realm of my ambitions. If I were ambitious to the same degree but it were business, law, medicine, and things like that, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be spared this particular set of judgements. Because there are those, including those amoungst my friends, who believe that the only pure ambitions in the arts are those that have to do with making your best art. The instant you also admit that you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind if you got paid for it (you know, being paid to do what I love, like non-artistic people can do without judgement&#8230;being able to focus all my time on the art instead of having to give my whole day to a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153day job\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and cramming bits of art into my evening&#8230;) or that you see benefits in being known by people other than your friends, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re suspect and a sell-out and a defiler of art.<\/p>\n<p>Ehm, no. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m working to make authentic art that speaks to me and is high quality. Your limited capacity to conceive of a situation where one can be true to art and hope that truth helps pay the rent doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sound like a cause for <em>me<\/em> to feel shame&#8230;(It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay. Pause a moment, reassess, change your mind. See, now you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re good? Didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change your mind? Well, now you know a topic you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re best not pressing me on.)<\/p>\n<p>Because I continue to work hard towards my dreams and to do that without shame.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amberbird.com\/na\/na-ambitious.php\">Cross-posted<\/a> to the Not Ashamed section of my site (so that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all tidy).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already, please read the introduction post. That will give you context for this page. Ambition has its pitfalls. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to pretend it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. For the sake of fulfilling ambitions, people have lied, cheated, stolen, and done all manner of other immoral and unethical things. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve thoughtlessly ruined relationships. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lived with only their own personal glory in mind. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not here to say that all ambitious pursuit ought to be free of shame. Nope. I fully advocate shame for some people and the way they pursue what they do. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve examined both my dreams and my intentions. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just know what I want, but I also know why I want those things. And I see no shame in wanting success with my music or my writing, nor do I see shame in the reasons I want that success. (I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t elaborate here, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a list of reasons, and they have nothing to do with personal glory.) There are two ways in which my pursuits of my ambitions are seen as a reason for shame, in addition to the reasons listed in my rock musician and scifi writer essays. First, some people look [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artists-life","category-not-ashamed","category-relationships"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Not Ashamed: Ambitiously Pursuing My Dreams - Amber Bird | Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amberbird.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/20\/not-ashamed-ambitiously-pursuing-my-dreams\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not Ashamed: Ambitiously Pursuing My Dreams - Amber Bird | Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already, please read the introduction post. That will give you context for this page. Ambition has its pitfalls. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to pretend it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. For the sake of fulfilling ambitions, people have lied, cheated, stolen, and done all manner of other immoral and unethical things. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve thoughtlessly ruined relationships. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lived with only their own personal glory in mind. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not here to say that all ambitious pursuit ought to be free of shame. Nope. I fully advocate shame for some people and the way they pursue what they do. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve examined both my dreams and my intentions. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just know what I want, but I also know why I want those things. And I see no shame in wanting success with my music or my writing, nor do I see shame in the reasons I want that success. 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