Chapter
2 focuses on Walt’s tumultuous childhood, his life growing up on a farm, his
early artistic career and jobs, his experiences with the armed forces, and the
many difficulties he faced as a youth.
Based
on what I know about people, when it comes to moving they tend to be in
extremes-they either hate it or enjoy it. However, I recognize that the tone of
a move depends on why it’s happening. The one move I experienced that I didn’t
like was the one that took me away from the home I had mentioned in my last
blog post. I’m noticing more of what I mentioned in my last post about how difficult
it was for Walt to leave the farm, as it was like watching one’s world
disappear.
I find
it interesting that Walt was deemed “too young to do much useful work” (8). If
my parents had seen that I was well and fit enough to get dumped into creeks by
hogs and wander around dense woods all day, they would think I was well enough
to do something-and they did. I can barely remember not having chores. It
makes me wonder how parenting perceptions might have been different back then,
or if perhaps it was part of being on a farm and even the most menial fetching
tasks would have been beyond Walt as a child. However, also unlike Walt, I
don’t know many people who were subjected to intolerable amounts of work the
second they were able, as noted when Watts recounts Walt’s early job as a paper
boy. Perhaps it balances out that way.
The
chapter also speaks gratuitously to Walt’s boundless energy and work
ethic-something I tried to capture in my presentation. I find it interesting
that Walt favored mental labor over physical jobs; I certainly understand the
appeal as someone who has chosen a creative career path, but some days I can
work on something for hours and I won’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything
until I get up and do some physical work-make some impact on the physical world.
It doesn’t make sense to me. What does make sense to me, though, is the
aversion to poverty. I’ve heard it from my Mom as well as many of my older
friends: when one spends an extended period of time living hand-to mouth they
become so opposed to feeling that way again that they’ll gladly put in the
extra effort to make sure their children or other loved ones get something
better than what they got. I would like to think that that’s a fundamental part
of anyone’s work ethic.
This
chapter talks a lot about the many jobs Walt took to facilitate his artistic
education, and I feel like I can relate. As one who is studying game
development, people bother me a lot asking me why I don’t play more video games
than I do. I hardly play any games at all because I always end up putting
something else before it, to the point where a lot of “hardcore” gamers would
just call me a poser or something. For some reason, I keep having to explain to
people that understanding what one needs to know to create such a thing
requires infinitely more than what playing games can teach a person. What I
learned isn’t going to do me much good if I put off my primary education to do
it, and all the time I spent playing games is only going to matter so much when
I walk into an interview. By the same token, I feel like one might look at Walt
and wonder why he didn’t take part in jobs that were more relevant to his
career, as opposed to working on the railroads or delivering postage (or why he
didn’t focus on his art more intensely). In both cases, I feel like the two key
things are priorities and exposure. When one limits their focus to just the one
thing that they desire and allow for no deviation, they limit their capacity to
fulfill that desire. In keeping one’s horizons broad, one can better understand
what about that goal is truly pressing or important.
Overall,
very enlightening-there’s a lot of that “lifting the veil” type stuff in this
chapter. A good read, and I’m liking how I’m relating to a lot of this as I
reread it.
No comments:
Post a Comment