The chameleon fixes its hue...

Just days away from forty, I'm realizing that my days of trying to fit myself into the cursed marketplace are over. I will have to do what I can do, and find meaningful ways to make a living from those skills. I lack the will to play along. Other voices are calling me.

But here and now, I simply can not stomach the small-minded, neurotic, power hungry, anti-life, desperation I encounter in so many places. Some will say that's infantile. Others will understand. And of course there are wonderful people I work with too, people who manage to sail the choppy seas of the marketplace without shaking every rivet loose from their well-armored hulls. Cheers to you beautiful people, you know who you are (I hope!).

I used to be a chameleon. A Peter Sellers for the marketplace to have and adapt and employ. Once, I could be anything for anyone, and as a result I have had some very interesting and fun and lucrative jobs. Today, I am honest about who I am, what I can do, what I want to do, what I think people want me to do, etc., and I've noticed that in many cases this honesty triggers a fear and disgust: What kind of game are you playing? How dare you bring your "self" to a meeting... My take? The marketplace is a sickness that makes the ungrounded and unvaccinated among us fearful of and repulsed by our own humanity. I don't want to spend the next forty years anywhere near that interpretation of life.

As my friend Shana says, "Go where the love is." I don't take that in the flaky hippie sense or the emotionally needy sense, to me it's a maxim that says work with people who are smart and love the work they do, love themselves, love the world, and can only operate as their true selves, not as an angry fearful construct. Rare stuff. You know it when you see it.