This is Jamie’s Room, a once a day musing about my career, purpose and how I try not to fail at a bunch of things.
Please don’t take me too seriously, I ramble quite a bit.
I’ve just read this GQ article on the development of Christian Bales’ career and his thoughts on his 35 years in the Hollywood.
You would assume this man who is well known for his method acting and highly strung nature would be sitting proud and pompous, viewing his art as the medium for his personality or some other artsy belief. Yet, reading through the interview the opposite is expressed, he seems irreverent and holds a remarkable carelessness about his craft. The interview can be summed up in the following exchange between him and GQ:
I hate to break it to you but you’re a real person too.
What?!
Bales’ beliefs around his own lack of self-importance (so much so that he would try very hard to derail an entire interview about himself) is so jarringly freeing that it has stoked my own self-examination into what I take seriously and what I don’t.
This is where you point to my own hypocritical self-seriousness…
Follow the fun.
Above all, guard what brings you joy.
It seems that as we begin to examine ourselves and what we do, we automatically move away from the thing that we are doing and step into a headspace that is only able to think about what we are doing. I’m starting to believe that we lose touch with reality when we resort to thinking about our experience. Is it possible that the radical choice to avoid self-examination is precisely how Bale remains unabashedly himself in an industry that is all about self-image.
Here’s what I want to do.
I’m still in the middle of Atomic Habits and along with some light reading of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I want to reach my own potential. To excel in what I’m currently doing as well as gain some clarity around what I actually want to do.
Is it possible to fix as many of my problems with the techniques, ideas and thoughts from these two books but only do it in pursuit of the things that brings me joy? To do all this and live a very un-self-conscious life.
I recently had an against-the-grain kind of thought.
What if I’ll only find out what I want when I become more of myself?
I’m rambling now.
Jamie