"I used to think people doing things weird were weird. That was before I realized that people doing things weird weren’t weird at all. It was the people who were saying they were weird who were weird."

Paul McCartney

How many times have you felt as if you were hurtling toward a brick wall at 90 mph--and someone supposedly dear to you gave you the advice, "Slow down!" or "Relax"? As many times as I've been advised to slow down, I've wondered whether hitting the wall at thirty mph was truly preferable to hitting it at 90. If you're going to go splat, make it a complete splat! How else will you find out in time whether that wall is in fact, as you imagined, the secret door to your dreams?

I’m talking about the speed and shape of your creative life--and about the wall that so often becomes a door. Your chosen speed and trajectory are precisely what distinguish you, a "Type C personality," from the others who are saying, "Relax."

I like to think it’s because of my Accountant father and my Visionary mother that I ended up with what I call the Type C personality: C for creative, C for Mercury’s cadeuceus (that magic wand), and, yes, C for crazy. There’s a crucial difference between the Type C and the traditional, overstressed, and intrinsically unhappy Type A, one largely based on a higher degree of awareness. The Type C insists on choosing only stress that brings him pleasure, stress brought on by pursuing his impossible dream. As a result, once they "get their heads together," and learn to relax (like the Type B), Type Cs thrive on the very stress that grinds away at the Type A.

If you're one of those fortunate souls whose attitude is always perfect, who goes through life with an eternal smile of confidence, and who has never found it necessary to scream or cry, this article is not for you. I wish I could say, through the years of my mid-life career transit, that I've always been "up." The truth is, I've had to build my "upness," sometimes from what felt like scratch, nearly every day. I like to think it's because the life I've chosen requires me to do things I've never done before, things I'm not always certain I can find a way of doing.

Whether they are salespeople or athletes, writers or inventors, builders, proprietors of boutiques, or entrepreneurs, Type C personalities are quite different from others. It’s the product, not the process, that turns them on. They’re in love with the words, "Go for it."

Once upon a time I resigned my position as tenured professor of comparative literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles to pursue a new full-time career as free-lance writer, independent producer, and literary manager. I exchanged a thirty-year "comfort horizon" (how much of the future you can envision as being covered by income-generating contracts presently in hand) for one that has ranged from a mere 24 hours to nine months at the very best--normally hovering precariously between 45 and 90 days. When people told me that my mid-life career change was insane, I reminded them (and myself) of Salvador Dali's taunt: "The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad." Regardless of how that struck my interrogator, it made me feel better.

People tell me that it "took a lot of courage" to resign the total security of a tenured position. The comment sounded alien to me at first, then started to trouble me more and more. I’ve always taken pride in doing something good, and "courage" sounds very good. I can see now why what I had done sounded courageous to others. But I didn't feel courageous at the time. Instead, on many mornings and afternoons and especially evenings when I had absolutely no idea how I could continue for another hour, I felt certain I'd made a gigantic mistake. Had I foreseen what it would cost me in every aspect of my life, I told myself, I might never have undertaken my new career. Visualizing the future is one thing. Seeing it in actuality would have discouraged me.

Instead of "courage" the word I came to use was "challenge." I needed to feel challenged, needed to challenge myself. My career transit was a necessity, not a luxury, keeping my sense of "self" intact. Did I have the strength and stamina to face the unfamiliar adversities I had chosen for myself? And to be called, in the process, "self-centered," "selfish," "irresponsible," and "crazy"?

Sophocles: It's a terrible thing to look upon your troubles and to realize that you yourself and no one else are responsible for them.

Atchity: It's a wonderful thing to look upon the challenges you’ve created for yourself and to embrace them as your own.

Let's admit that it takes courage to express your Type C personality--to live with the consequences of your decision to be yourself, whatever you conceive that self to be. It takes courage to stand apart from all the "normal" people out there who criticize and raise their eyebrows, wondering why you're so crazy (while they wonder, to themselves, why they can't be a little more like you).

Even more, it takes courage to stand against the enemy within: the normal person inside you, shaped by your parents and the Society of the Non-weird, who spends his every waking effort trying to stop you from doing something as insane as quitting a high-paying, secure position to pursue your idiosyncratic need for freedom, creativity, and self-definition.

Career transition isn't recommended for the overly critical or for those who need security. It’s for those who know that the ultimate challenge lies in the self-knowledge that comes only when you pit skills beyond your present imagining against the relentless resourcefulness of a world of trouble.

No one in his right mind would encourage anyone over the age of 25 to sacrifice security for the uncharted territory of a new career--unless the idea had already occurred to them.

The ultimate investment is investing in yourself, by designing a life around your unique interests. Everyone might tell you that is the way to happiness, but very few people will encourage you to pursue such selfishness. Even fewer pursue it for themselves. Those who do are the ones who make a difference. When creative career change is successful, it leads to fulfillment. But what about when it's not? As you get into it, you quickly begin to realize that "success" is ephemeral. Not simply because change is tough, but because even the word "success" must be redefined in order to continue being useful. I didn't feel successful after having produced my first films, but I felt very successful while producing them.

Aside from suffocation, my greatest fear in life had always been feeling that I would come to feel that my energies weren't being challenged, that my time on earth was being wasted. I'd reacted strongly to the poignancy of former President Lyndon Johnson's telltale comment: "To hunger for use, and to go unused, that is the greatest hunger of all." The person who engages in career transition has made the conscious decision to create that need to be used and useful. He is following in the footsteps of Bernard Shaw who wrote forty-one of his fifty-two produced plays after age 45: Pygmalion at age 57, Saint Joan at age 67, and Buoyant Billions at age 91. Shaw wrote:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Everyone's first career is an accident. Your next career, the child of your choice, is your mighty purpose that makes life worth living.



Adapted from How to Escape Lifetime Security and Pursue Your Impossible Dream: A Guide to Changing Your Career by Kenneth Atchity, Helios Press, New York, 2004, pages 1-13.



About Ken Atchity

Dr. Atchity, "the story merchant," has a unique relationship with storytellers that goes back to his childhood in Louisiana and Missouri where listening to stories was an everyday event. As a writer, editor, professor, publisher, and producer Ken is the founder and chairman of the literary management and motion picture production company Atchity Entertainment International and its editorial sister company Writers’ Lifeline Inc. He is the author of 14 books, including A Writer’s Time: A Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision (W. W. Norton), which The New York Times called "the best recent book on writing"; and (with Chi-Li Wong) Writing Treatments That Sell: How to Create and Market Your Story Ideas to the Motion Picture and TV Industry (Holt), #4 on The Los Angeles Times Book Review’s Hollywood Bestseller List. He has also produced 22 films, including "Joe Somebody" (Tim Allen and Jim Belushi), "Life, or Something Like It" (Angelina Jolie and Ed Burns), and "The Madam’s Family: The Truth about Canal Street Brothel" (Ellen Burstyn, Annabella Sciorra, Dominique Swain).

Ken has devoted a lifetime to helping writers develop their craft to the professional level. In his latest book, How to Escape Lifetime Security and Pursue Your Impossible Dream: A Guide to Transforming Your Career (Helios Press), he tells the story of his journey from suffocating tenured university professor to creative literary entrepreneur, shares the attitudes and strategies that form the foundation of his success, and prepares aspiring artists to take the plunge toward a professional writing career! Subscribe free to our daily inspirational newsletter by writing to inspire@thewriterslifeline.com for latest client news, info on our sister company, Atchity Entertainment International, and contests and awards available to writers.

About Writers’ Lifeline

Writers’ Lifeline Inc. is a full-service literary development and editorial company devoted to helping writers prepare their novels, screenplays, and nonfiction books for the commercial marketplace. www.writerslifeline.com is the one-stop destination for all your writing needs, from inspiration and encouragement to editorial coaching and copyediting. Visit us online today, and subscribe to our free inspirational e-newsletter!

Writer’s Lifeline success stories have included

• Governor Jesse Ventura’s two best-sellers I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed (13 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List) and Do I Stand Alone?
• Steve Alten’s Meg (followed by The Trench, and Primal Waters), sold to Walt Disney Pictures for $1.1 mil; & to Doubleday-Bantam for $2.2 mil.
• The Amazing World of Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not! and Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not! Encyclopedia of the Bizarre (Julie Mooney)
• John Scott Shepherd ("Life or Something Like It" (Angelina Jolie), "Joe Somebody" (Tim Allen), and novels Henry’s List of Wrongs and The Dead Father’s Guide to Sex & Marriage (Pocket Books).
• The Last Valentine (St. Martin’s Press followed by three novels and two nonfiction books).
• The Learning Annex: The Writer’s Lifeline has provided writing and editorial services for its line of books published by John Wiley & Sons.
• Los Angeles Times bestselling Cheryl Saban’s Sins of the Mother and Shirley Palmer’s Lioness, Danger Zone, and The Trade; poker player Sam Farha.