I found myself completing reorienting in terms of how I approach dancing after I moved to Toronto. I guess a new environment does inspire changes and new thinking.
The reorientation is all about creativity.
I decided that climbing the ladder in the competitive dance world is the least appealing because I can see right to the end of the process: I win a lot of battles and probably judge events. This is akin to climbing the corporate ladder: I get promotion after promotion and in 20-year time, I am probably the vice president of an org at Amazon. I will establish myself, obtain tremendous financial gains, and some impacts, mostly on the organization I manage. This is the conventional path, and the known path by definition because I can envision it simply by looking at other people.
But I can’t help but notice a deeper yearning that is resisting this gravitational pull toward the convention and directing me to the unknown. I ask myself: why not attempt the moonshot? Why not attempt to carry an idea all the way, and create impacts that can potentially be much bigger?
[Counter-intuitively, thinking about impacts hinders creativity. They are the end results, out of my control, and creates frictions in following what makes me feel good.]
Surprisingly, that could be easier because there is less competition.
More than a careerist, or even more than a craftsman, I want to be a artist in the word’s true sense: to create.
Now the key ingredients are: ideas and intention.
Ideas are the construct that I work with and develop in the creative process. And intention is the focus needed to bring those creative ideas out to the world to witness.
I hope to connect with people via those ideas. If I push them far enough and people notice and appreciate, they will want to learn and join me. And during this process, I am humble in serving the ideas rather than myself.
At the end, I wish myself good luck and believe in my intuition.
A side note, this is how I define impacts:
I watched Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer three times. I listened to its soundtrack at home all the time. I spent thousands putting up a Picasso’s painting. And it’s been providing me with new directions, inspirations and strength.
I feel Oppenheimer’s ghost lives in my place.
This is the impacts artists can make, this is the impacts art can make.
Mental maps for everything I have been thinking about since relocation:

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