Art Teaches You to Fish

Was talking to a friend about their job hunt. My friend made an observation that (with their permission), they're letting me share:

It's strange to call it a job "hunt." If you're hunting/fishing - you're usually sitting out there and waiting. And while you're waiting, you don't really have visibility into all the animals or fish passing you by.

Job hunting is not like that at all. There's no waiting. You're constantly putting yourself out there, feeling each miss deeply. Imagine if you were fishing, and you could easily see beneath the surface of the water - seeing each fish as it swims past your bait. It gets you wondering: "Do they even care about my bait? Is it good enough? Is it me? What am I doing wrong?" Then imagine, they nibble on your bait - ever so slightly that you feel the tug on your fishing line... but then they dart off, and now you're wondering: "Why? What did I do wrong?" For the most part, it's a leisurely activity because you relax in the ignorance of not knowing what's happening beneath the surface of the water.

Job hunting is such a test of your confidence and resilience. You question your knowledge, you doubt the choices you made years ago, you feel it every time you hit apply.

Thinking through this, we concluded it shouldn't be called a job hunt. Instead, we equated it to cooking, baking, carpentry, writing, auditioning, playing an instrument. All creative pursuits. When you do something creative it's rare to produce the results you hoped for. Many artists labor over their work because they can't get reality to match what they see in their minds. 

It's laborious, it's torturous, it's coming face to face with failure, with rejection but still persisting.

Aristotle said of Art: "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." and Nietzche said "We have art in order not to die of the truth."

Art doesn't try to catch fish - Art teaches you to fish.

Thinking of the job hunt as a creative pursuit, here's what (hopefully) starts to emerge: Each new job application becomes a form of expression. It's an iteration of your work. Yes, it's still a difficult pursuit - but it's a different pursuit. You stop measuring your worth by the number of rejections.

Instead, your worth is tied to how you've represented yourself. Each ghosting, each rejection ceases to be a a statement of that inward signifance. Instead it's a satement of how that significance has appeared outwardly. And so - as an artist, you refine, and refine - trying to get reality as close as you can to matching that inward significance.

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