They say that the unconventional path is the loneliest path. I’ve recently realized, after looking back on my life, that I am steadfastly unconventional, and it does indeed feel quite lonely. It has certainly caused me my share of sadness and frustration as a kid.
When I was younger, I preferred to be alone. It was probably easier to be alone than it was to conform to those around me; I loved, and still love, to be alone…but that wasn’t the source of sadness for me. The frustration of not knowing myself was the true source of sadness. Not understanding who I was or what I wanted, constantly comparing myself to others and then trying to be different while still fitting in on some level, and ultimately trying to conform enough to not stand out in a negative way. Gawd, it’s tiring just writing that!
In high school, my best friends were usually the kids who weren’t ordinary. We spent plenty of time trying to look different, listening to better music and tiptoeing on the boundary of any given rule. We were trying to either fit in or not fit in, and none of it was authentic. After high school, I had no desire to go to college even though that’s exactly where my friends ended up. After high school, I headed east to stay with some relatives until my parents informed me they were moving to California. I went with them and started going to a community college, dabbling in some music production classes, which I loved, and opened myself up to a whole community of creative types. It was scary, because I wasn’t creative and felt intimidated by those who were. But I felt more at home around those people than with anyone in the “normal” working world of my retail job.
I decided I wanted to work in the music industry and set about researching schools I could go to that didn’t require me to be a performer in order to be accepted. Back then, there weren’t many universities offering Music Business programs, but Denver had one where I could work on a dual major in order to get out of the performing side of the degree. Again, it wasn’t the conventional way, but spending time in that world made me feel alive and closer to my potential than ever before.
While studying music business courses in Denver, I went to work at Twist & Shout and for the next 16 years of my life, I was in right where I wanted to be. Talk about unconventional. I was aging in the “young” world of rock & roll. What normal person over 27 still worked in a record store? But during school, I had decided that retail was as far as I wanted to go in the music industry. I excelled at this small independent company which offered more flexibility and more worldly training than I could have gotten anywhere else. Mainly thanks to being in a safe environment with other like-minded, non-conforming freaks, as I shed who I thought I was and came into my own being. What a realization I happened upon: I could successfully live up to my potential anywhere (because I now knew who I was) and not get sucked into what society says is a normal career path.
I don’t believe I’ve consciously chosen these unconventional paths in my younger life. I think I just followed what interested me at the time. But what a big relief to know that even when I was young, I was more interested in what I was interested in. That’s no easy task considering how surrounded we are by a society that insists in order to be successful, we must follow the predictable pathways and conform to everyone else’s tastes.
In my latest pursuit of happiness via the unconventional route (quit the steady full time job and start a coaching practice, having no experience being self-employed), I’ve been the poorest of anyone around me. I’ve been left behind, technologically speaking; while everyone was salivating over the newest smart phone, I was still holding onto my landline and a prepaid flip phone. I’ve had to pass on plenty of social events that I didn’t have the funds for and had to be especially creative with groceries, with as little as $5/week to spend at times. But I am still certain that at the end of my life, none of that will matter. What will matter is the deep pride I feel for making my own way, for persistently striving for the life I want, for making internal happiness my main motivation, for uncovering my unique gift and finding ways to share it with the world in spite of having to make a living.
There are too many people who get to midlife and realize they didn’t follow their own passions because they felt pressure to follow a more conventional path; so they end up in situations that they’ve merely been tolerating for too many decades. I feel very lucky, the more I think about it now, because I wasn’t conscious of navigating those paths at the time. I could have gone either way, but I’m tremendously grateful that I allowed something in me to lead the way, even as I watched others move faster towards success, money and what I thought was happiness.
It’s Your Turn::
What path are you currently on? Is it one that feels good to you? Are you heading in the direction your heart wants? Are you on a path because “they” say it’s the only way? It’s never too late to change directions. Put your full attention on which path you want to be on no matter what’s happening currently.
Sign up for my email newsletter (in the column to the right) and have access to an exercise that will help you reflect on the big shifts in your life and will prove that you are capable to navigate an unconventional route that feels more authentic.
Just remember, the conventional path is not the only path!
