Tag Archives: Life

A World of Possibilities

When I’m not writing (which is most of the time), I have a job – a profession; a career, so to speak. I recently changed roles in my company, and although I’m really not looking for other jobs, I took the opportunity to make a few changes to my LinkedIn profile, update my status, etc.

It reminded me of a few years ago, when I started considering writing as a viable career option (I’m still not sure if it is, to be perfectly honest), and I was looking to create a LinkedIn profile for myself as an author. You see, whilst I do have a professional account for my ‘real’ job, I work for a reasonably high-profile company, and as such I have to be careful about what I say and do outside of work, in case it appears as representative of my company. Given that the job of ‘author’ is essentially about speaking my mind and telling the truth as I see it, this could potentially cause a conflict with my position at work, and that’s not something I’m willing to compromise.

The problem is this: LinkedIn have a very strict policy regarding multiple accounts. Although I could, yes, create a second, unrelated account for myself as a writer, if LinkedIn were able to connect the two accounts (via profile information, IP addresses, or whatever), not only could I lose both, but I could be banned from LinkedIn entirely. A LinkedIn profile, it seems, is directly tied to an individual person, and all the professional things that individual does.

With a world of possibilities, it seems society is still geared to catering to just one at a time.

The fundamental flaw in this setup is that it really caters to an outdated, linear view of career progression: that you move from job to job, company to company, and you don’t start one career until you’re done with another. This is fine if your career is your life, but I think that, for the majority of people, their passion in life lies often outside of what they do for a living. And whilst many of those people will never act on their passion, for those that do – for those who want to make a career out of passion, and not just skill – there’s very little opportunity to build a profile around your passion whilst still working a day job.

I’ll give you an example: let’s say you’ve worked for a globally-recognized coffee brand for fifteen years. You’ve worked your way up the corporate ladder, from employee to manager to district or maybe even regional director, and you aren’t really in a position to give that up. But on the side, you really, really love drawing political cartoons. Maybe you’ve sold a few – under a pseudonym – and it looks like a promising opportunity. But until you are able to match your $75K salary from drawing, you can’t quit your main job. And for as long as you work for a major brand, you can’t be seen to publicly affiliate with any one political view or another, for fear of representing the entire brand.

What do you do? With a world of possibilities, it seems society is still geared to catering to just one at a time. I can’t represent myself professionally as a writer and an employee, and so I’m forced to choose between one career or the other. Everything I do on one side has to be carefully and meticulously kept separate from the other. The corporate me, the writer me, and even the musician me, can’t really coexist.

Even within writing, I’ve chosen to keep two identities – because my fantasy work is so very different to my YA/literary work. And while I don’t really mind ‘cross-contamination’ – I’ll happily reference both sets of work on here or on cmnorthauthor.com – it’s another example of how society simply doesn’t expect an individual person to have multiple passions, careers, or possibilities. Imagine if Stephen King tried to sell and market a beach-bum romance novel; under his real name people would simply be confused, but by adopting a pseudonym (as he did with Richard Bachman, for example) he can publish genres that would typically be considered outside of his wheelhouse.

It does make life frustrating at times, however; I try to commit to writing under both Satis and C.M. North, but time is prohibitive, and managing two blogs is twice the effort of managing one. I have two Instagram accounts, two Twitter accounts … the list goes on.

In the end, I don’t want to sacrifice my passion or my vision to practicality – however tempting – and so I have little choice but to soldier on as both Satis and C.M. North, as well as a professional representative of a major corporation, and simply hope my paths remain parallel.

What are the limitations of your pursuits? What stops you from putting your all into one thing or another? Or are you able to combine your career with your passion, and get everything done in one go?

Movie Night: First Reformed

Year: 2017
Genre: Drama
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric the Entertainer

A minister of a small congregation in upstate New York grapples with mounting despair brought on by tragedy, worldly concerns and a tormented past.

We had just finished watching Gattaca (a truly world-class movie) when we came across First Reformed on the iTunes New & Noteworthy section, and thought to give it a try – more because of Ethan Hawke than anything else.

I will say Ethan Hawke seems to truly dedicate himself to whatever role he takes.

The plot – such as it is – centers around a middle-aged minister of a fading congregation whose son was killed in Afghanistan (or Iraq – I can’t remember). Whilst he tries to comfort and help the few remaining members of his flock, he clearly is battling an almost unbearable inner despair – something that becomes painfully evident as he fails to reach the people he tries to help.

First Reformed is really more of a character study on depression and the loss of faith, and the events that take place are at once surreal and hauntingly believable. When Ethan Hawke’s character, Minister Toller, comes across a suicide vest in the belongings of one of his congregation, he doesn’t report it – he takes it. Combined with the stark contrast between his own poorly-attended worship and the wildly successful for-profit church in the neighboring town, and things take – as you can imagine – a nasty turn for the worse.

The final few scenes are nail-bitingly intense, and equally bizarre – suffice to say bombs, churches and barbed wire are involved. This isn’t a happy film, but it subtly underplayed by the entire cast to great effect. You truly believe the emotional rollercoaster of every character, even if you don’t particularly like any of them; the person I felt sorry for the most was ultimately Amanda Seyfried’s Mary, who really didn’t deserve the punishment inflicted on her by Ethan Hawke’s misery and rage.

Sad, despondent and dark.

6/10 would watch again.

Movie Night: The Lobster

Year: 2015
Genre: Black Comedy … ?
Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden

In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

There is very little lobster in The Lobster. In fact, I don’t think there was one at all.

This film carries with it the dubious accolade of being one of the most bizarre movies I’ve watched in recent years. I read the above description before watching it, and I’m not sure whether I should or shouldn’t have; it certainly helps explain a lot of the exposition, but there’s a sense of utterly nonsensical mystery that stems from not knowing the premise from the outset.

The Lobster bears many of the hallmarks of an indie film trying its best to not fit into any particular genre; billed as a black comedy, there were moments I laughed perhaps only because I thought it was meant to be funny, and not because it actually was. In fact, there were more scenes I found outright disturbing than I found funny. It’s interesting, as these are some of the same comments aimed at my alter-ego young adult novel, 22 Scars – that it tries almost too hard to be edgy, at the expense of plot and character clarity.

For example, very few characters are named, and only when necessary; even Rachel Weisz is known only as the short-sighted woman. Another key character is referred to throughout the film as the heartless woman. There are no place names – only The Hotel and The City – and even when these settings are abandoned for the wild woods, there is very little reference to anything grounded in reality.

In fact, the very premise – that single adults are transformed into animals if they fail to find a partner in 45 days – becomes something of a MacGuffin to the themes of love and lust. The point of the movie – if there even is one – is tenuously that love can’t be forced, but can be found in the strangest of places. To this end, it hardly matters that the threat hanging over the characters’ heads is transfiguration – it could have been death or exile, for all it matters – but rather that there simply be some impetus for the characters to connect with each other in a context where they have very little other reason to.

In the end, there are enough bizarre moments to elicit a kind of disbelieving guffaw – in some ways, a funnier film than Crazy Rich Asians, which we had watched earlier in the day – but they are overshadowed by the wide brushstrokes of disturbing insanity, including a woman jumping from a window and breaking her neck but not dying, and a frankly cringe-inducing final scene. I would hardly label The Lobster as a comedy – black or otherwise – but perhaps closer to an essay on love; a kind of parable for a society that praises social relationships for their appearance rather than their substance.

Either way, The Lobster is a film that I would recommend only to those who have the nerve to stomach some truly troubling material, and despite that recommendation, hardly one I would watch again any time soon. As one of my friends put it, there were multiple moments throughout where I asked myself why I was still watching it at all.

4/10 would watch again.