my mountain: a manifesto

Once every few weeks, I watch Neil Gaiman’s 2012 commencement speech at the University of the Arts. It consistently serves as inspiration for my approach to life in a creative field, though his wise words should encourage those on any career path. Recently, I was particularly struck by his guidance to those in the early stages of forging their own creative journey.

“Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut,” he says, “and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you’re doing the right thing because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, buying clothes, paying debts, and taking what you can get.”

As I seek to maintain work in a pastry kitchen, graduate classes in gastronomy, curating a blog, and establishing my social presence as a writer, I have a tendency to feel a bit overwhelmed. No matter where I turn, I see others who are doing each of these activities better than me, or who are farther along down any of those paths, or who’ve taken a different approach to the same job. I continually question if I’m doing all the right things and I daily think about what direction I should head next.

The last time I listened to Gaiman’s advice, however, I was encouraged by the analogy he makes around three and a half minutes in. He says that early on, he imagined where he wanted to be – a writer, supporting himself with his words – as a distant mountain. As long as he continued walking towards the mountain, he knew that he’d be alright. This gave him the freedom, then, to turn down tempting, lucrative job offers with the knowledge that they would have brought him away from the mountain. If, however, those same offers had arrived at an earlier time, he would have taken them, because they would have brought him closer to the mountain than he was at that time.

Over the past weekend, I shared this imagery with my parents, both of whom work hard to balance support for my dreams with setting forth realistic expectations. Whenever I bring them ideas about jobs that I find interesting or programs in which I’m considering investing time and money, they question how those prospects fit into my larger plan. Acknowledging my own awareness of the near-impossibility of deciding whether or not I’m doing the right thing, my dad inquired about my mountain. I offered a quick response, which I proceeded to amend multiple times throughout the evening. In the end, my mountain became more of a manifesto.

I’m sure my mountain will continue to evolve as I grow to understand more what I do and do not enjoy, and for that reason I’ve purposely separated it from simply a goal or dream job. My mountain could manifest itself in a wide array of jobs; in a way I have reached it even in my current circumstance. With this manifesto in mind, I hope to more freely gauge which courses to take, which jobs to apply for, which places to live, continually asking myself, “Does this take me closer to my mountain than I am at this time?”

my mountain: a manifesto

i desire to support myself by creating beautiful and delicious words and foods that compel all who interact with them to seek to understand more fully the intersection of food, faith, and culture, encouraging a unique and thoughtful approach to each of these subjects that in turn moves myself and others to work towards social and environmental justice.