Discovering the Royal Road to Career Satisfaction Through Writing and Art
Kendall Dudley
www.lifeworkscareers.com
Dudley, Kendall; Wharton School, BS; Columbia University, MA; Director, LIFEWORKS Career & Life Design, Lexington and Watertown, MA; presenter/ teacher/ artist, Harvard University; Lesley University; Montserrat College of Art; Pendle Hill. His interests include transformation and change, creativity at work, mid-life redirection and creative options to retirement. He designs programs for corporate and academic clients, retreat centers and national conferences. Recent publications include "Picturing Work: Career and Life Design Using Writing and Art" (2006). For more information, contact lifework@rcn.com or www.lifeworkscareers.com
This paper is based on a PDI presented at the 2007 National Career Development Global Conference, July 6-8, 2007, Seattle, WA., entitled “Career Design Using Writing and Art.”
Good work dwells in the intersection of one’s skills, hope, power and life story and as such is rich an
d complex, shifting with changes in oneself and the wider environment. In the 20 years I’ve been a career counselor, I’ve seen my own work shift dramatically and yet I still see myself occupying the same occupational title. Everyone has their own story or stories about work and whether starting out or starting over, the search for meaningful work comes back to the redefinition of those points of reference that guide one forward. The process of reencountering oneself can take many shapes (talking, therapy, long walks, poetry, music, school) but I’d like to focus on two, journal writing and art. These are not to replace whatever process being used by clients but to help them make the most of what they are already doing.
Why use writing and art?
People know many things about themselves but may not fully know the meaning of those facts. For example, one knows that they grew up Hittite or Luddite or erudite but don’t necessarily know the impact that these things have had on them. A client knows he fell out of a boat at 8, beat everyone in Boggle and was jilted at 16 but may misread or ignore the impact of those events today. What writing and art can do is help make connections between different events, people, places and ideas past and present. They are tools that weaken the boundaries we have erected inside us that separate work from play, love, and spirit. In a nutshell, writing and art enriches our inner landscape that allows for new identities, ideas and possibilities to emerge. To engage in this approach, though, requires taking creative risks and a willingness to quiet the internal watchdog—the same inner being that seeks to keep us sane and successful also ties us to the past, to habit and to the predictable.
Looking for meaning
I believe we are always searching for what matters in our lives but at different times, we are more willing to endure the hard work necessary to uncover that meaning and to act upon that discovery. Too often our search for meaning is conditional or limited: we want to be in touch with what ignites us but don’t want it to disrupt other parts of life. Gina Philips, 34, said “Good God what would happen to my family if I discovered I had a passion for computers, Crete or world peace!” Milton Adamov, 48, said, “I’ve come this far with GE, I don’t know if I can stand to realize I took the wrong road at some point.”
Containers
We seek to hold onto our interpretations of work and life way past their shelf life. Our fears help us forget that endings are followed by beginnings and that often the power of a big idea brings tips for enlarging or redecorating that box we earlier designed for ourselves. The message here is not to fear our own growth for often it comes with operating instructions, and if not, necessity will point the way.
Andrew was a 39-year-old trade show planner whose promotion meant more uninspired meetings and distant relationships with others. 
When he was finally able to let go of his fear of change, he was able to “remember” he spoke German and knew a lot about Germany’s history and culture. His work and personal life had lived in two realms until he asked himself not what work he could do but what he really wanted to do.
Through writing his life story, keeping a structured journal and illustrating certain sections of it, two new ideas emerged: teach German at a high school and work for a German arts organization as an events planner. When he massaged those ideas together and added other interests in his life, he came up with these new possibilities: editor for a trade show publication, museum exhibition designer, history teacher for the Goethe Institute, image consultant for German-American companies, conference planner for the EEC…the list went on. Each would require weaving of his skills, interests and energies into different patterns but for once he enjoyed having possibilities! On a trip to Germany, he made a sketch of the town he stayed in—it surprised him that he would do this but he saw it as a sign of his wanting connection to this part of his past.
Softening the walls that keep information in separate categories
Andrew’s work and personal stories lived in two realms until one desperate moment he asked the question: what do I really want to do with my worklife? His responses may look simple to an observer, but not to him. What are the walls within each of us separating vital information from the possibility of creative contagion? Some of these walls have obvious labels (work, love, play, spirit) but others are mavericks, the result of times of pleasure and pain, grandeur and lunacy, real and imagined roles. Categories within us might include: propriety, shame, fun, health, surfing, fantasies, ageing, black holes, nomadic impulses, weird notions, what would others think, enrichments, my father’s dreams for me…and the list goes on. By asking our clients about the folders or partitions into which they tend to “file” information, we can help them see their internal “logic” and assist them in developing evocative and productive labels. By helping them open and / or repartition their thinking, we can help them gain greater access to the life memories useful for their reframing their reflections on work.
Who is the client now and not as she remembers herself?
Structured and unstructured writing and art fosters the growth of ideas and energy. By asking clients to illustrate their life story in 15 pictures, for example, they get an opportunity to revisit their interpretation of events and open the possibility that their version of the truth may have shifted. Given these shifts and the power that self-discovered imagery can have on shaping ideas about self, clients can see links to vocational possibilities that had formerly remain obscured.
By looking as some of the tools for this process, we may be able to see how these shifts can come about.
What kind of writing?
The most useful writing for these purposes is a kind of rough hewn journal writing that people won’t find pressed between marbled endpapers. It may be smooth or chopped or hesitant and strange. It may be the tentative jottings of a traveler with splashes of insight and words thrown down in the midst of a conversation, phrases penned at 4am, a rant, a forgotten dream, or the reactions to news of victims of the latest atrocity. This writing is a record of what a person is experiencing in the moment as well as the past in all the multicolored awkward glory of those moments.
There are many specific writing techniques that help open people to the energy within their life experiences and these include: timed free writing, stream of consciousness writing, writing without looking, writing in different rooms of one’s home and town, playing with tense and mood, writing histories of different body parts, personal objects and habits, as well as inventing alternative outcomes to previous life events. Such writings loosen clients’ hold on single versions of their stories, help open them to the pleasures of writing and of recording “what is” rather than “what ought to be”.
What kind of art?
The art envisioned here is not the stuff one pays the big bucks to see in hushed white spaces but the raucous, imprecise images that are more clear expressions of memories, feelings and ideas. It is colors colliding and circles that, upon reflection, wind up looking like a parent’s eyes that leads to a memory that triggers a conversation that needs to be recorded in one’s journal, necessary words that have tapped some inner reservoir of self awareness. This form of freely-made art is messy; it can be splashes of color that look awful until a shaft of blue opens a memory or idea or feeling that links to a journal entry that sparks a useful idea. It’s the kind of art that lets one play at a deep level, and out of that play find a link to some core intelligence that’s been trying to send out signals. As people grow more comfortable with the tools, they tend to get in touch with some essential self and the potential “products” that the self is looking to create.
Sample art exercises could include: keeping an illustrated journal, drawing or painting a self-portrait a day, discovering in the objects that one lives with those that reflect aspects of self and draw and write about them, write then illustrate ten life-shaping experiences, illustrate then draw ten “authentic” or “alive” moments when one felt totally focused on the event or activity, illustrate scenes from the last five years, illustrate the next five years, and construct a dialogue in words and pictures that completes a conversation or activity that has been left unfinished. These same exercises can be further focused by exploring the skills, interests and values implicit in the situations depicted.
These are spontaneous exploratory processes that by their nature are imprecise and easily discounted. These are tools for the traveler in search of self who is willing to wander down roads without fully knowing what lies ahead. This is a process that is ultimately revealing though not always providing at the moment the key to what has been revealed. Helping our clients unravel the meaning behind their words and images can be our task and one that can tell us as much about ourselves as the people we are working with.
I end with a few notes on tools for helping our clients in this process.
Tools for the traveler
Thoreau was always warning people against embarking on experiences that required buying new things. Let’s hope he forgives us for these transgressions.
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A journal, unlined, 9 x 6 at least or larger; one that is inexpensive enough so you won’t worry about using up pages but of sufficient quality your art efforts won’t bleed through the pages. I use Cachet’s 9 x 6 landscape format sketch book #1005. -
A good pen with a flowing ink supply; Pilot Precise P-500, extra fine, is excellent
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A set of 10 or 15 watercolor crayons (Caran d’Ache) to start with, then consider adding soft crayons, low odor markers and acrylic paints as you widen your format and interests to include new tools and techniques.
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2 watercolor brushes (a small #5 and a #12 are good and inexpensive)
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(extra credit item: small camera to carry around and use as a journal to snapshot your way through your current life.)