One of the most powerful benefits of creativity is the ability to channel its usefulness in different directions. What usually happens in this circumstance however, is that the consumers of the original creative content get all huffy about the meandering creative mien. Think about the last time your favourite pop star did an acoustic album.
On the web, one-person content cottages change their creative direction all the time. In most circumstances however, hardly anyone notices, or cares, for that matter. When a media content provider who does have a more significant audience stops contributing or moves in a different direction there is usually the requisite gnashing of consumer teeth. The angst is often much more apparent because of the content feedback mechanisms that are so predominant on web sites. As consumers of written, spoken or visual content on the web, we all have our own comfortable and trusted sources. A change in those sources can be jarring. Disquieting. Unexpected.
Whether expected or not, change is one way of measuring how effectively you use time. A life can be lived entirely in a single room but the process of inevitable change takes place. Your environment changes you and your body changes, whether you want it to or not. Merely putting in time during a lifetime will minimize change but you will still change. One day you will be alive and the next day you will be dead. A low rate of planned change over time indicates an ineffectively lived life. On the other hand, numerous, flighty, mis-directed and disrespectful changes over the course of a life offer another measure of poor time management. Somewhere between these two extremes lies a beneficial calculus that equates to the phrase "a life well lived". Change then cannot simply be performed in order to earn bonus points for consideration in an after-life of choice.
Voluntary change is the measurable result of influence. Consideration of change that takes place voluntarily should be heavily influenced by growth. Sadly it is often influenced more by greed, vanity or enmity. Quite frequently personal growth is cast in the mystique of spirituality. Sometimes people out-source their desire for growth to groups that have very distinct rule-sets. Vehicles like these may or may not be effective. We all grow and change in different ways. Our environmental and social interactions, our internal and external influencers, our route from the start to the end -- all of these things -- determine our uniqueness; our individualism.
Recently, writer and web contributor Ethan Johnson set about to change a few things in his life in a process he dubs a "a journey of unbecoming". To say that this is an unfortunate choice of words to explain his growth exercise would be an understatement. "Unbecoming" is associated with not being suited to circumstances, lacking good taste, or not being acquainted with codes of conduct. Surely he does not intend to launch himself into a spiral of tasteless, rule-breaking, inelegant and unseemly new content on his web sites? A deeper read reveals a desire "to unbecome" rather to engage in "conduct unbecoming". The difference is essential and illuminating. To unbecome, Ethan is engaging his readers in apophasis and it's there in much of his writing.
To a certain extent all positive change requires a course correction; a de-emphasis of negative influences and an illumination on corrective behaviours. Ethan noted recently that:
"I recognize that I have surrounded myself with the wrong things. I have expended energy in the pursuit of the wrong things. I have concerned myself with matters that are not of my concern. I have eaten the wrong foods. I have made unwise decisions.
It is time for me to unbecome the man that these actions have made me. It is time for me to not only model the change that I would like to see in the world, but to embrace it."
While Ethan and I have conversed on a number of things in the past, his recent change management process is not something we have discussed. As a reader I am not at all disquieted by his move from the active and highly page-ranked thevisionthing.com to the more personal ethmar.com. These sites are his creation and they are his to change. Ethan's work has always trended toward the themed and the essence of his genre is that of an essayist. In his apophatic way, he wants nothing to do with being a blogger because he is a writer. But he is a blogger because circumstance and positioning make him one.
I, for one, will continue to monitor the transcendence.