Success (Soundtrack of my Life)

Crown Navarre (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       Success is measured differently by each of us and often we have different views of our own success within our own lifetimes.    The standard of success might be the amount of money we have, what level we've achieved in our careers, who knows us or whom we know, or any other number of factors.  The view that others have about your success might be very different from how you view your own success.  There is no one standard that defines personal success.

         Naomi Ruth Eisenberg who was a vocalist and violinist with Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, one of the finest bands to come out of the early 70's San Francisco music scene, wrote the song "Success" which appears on the final album of this particular incarnation of the band.   Last Train to Hicksville...The Home of the Happy Feet is now considered an album classic from a band that could have offered so much more if they had continued.  Still, Hicks went on to form the Acoustic Warriors and perform as a solo artist.  Eisenberg continued playing with other acts including her own band Naomi Vice and occasional reunions with the Hot Licks.

        The song "Success" pretty well sums up the feelings of many in the entertainment industry as well as any other field of endeavor.    Success is always playing with our minds.  Enjoy the song and let me tell you my own thoughts pertaining to success as it relates to my own life.

Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks "Success" (1973)




Success

       When I was a kid I had dreams of what I wanted to be someday.  Those dreams changed at times and at times those dreams were pretty big.   Back then my hazy concept of success had more to do with recognition from others than any tangible understanding of money or other personal assets.  For me at that stage of life things like a house, a family, and everything that might surround me one day were merely a given that somehow I accepted would be there in some way, but nothing specific or definable.

       In junior high school a class social studies project had us looking to the future to research five potential fields that we might like to pursue as an adult.  My chosen fields--entertainment, music, writing, photography, and teaching--were each achieved by me to some degree in my life.  This is a certain success that I can claim though the individual success I achieved in each realm might not be especially significant.

       Millions pursue a successful career in entertainment while relatively few make much of a mark in the field.  Just having the opportunity to have worked and actually made a living in entertainment is my claim to having achieved a certain success.  I have little to claim as far as fame or money, but my experiences have been a wealth deposited to my bank of life memories.  I wanted to do something that many people dream about and I actually did it and made money.   To me that was a success.

        Success as an all-encompassing term that defines me is not something to which I can lay claim.  However the cumulative small successes in my life have brought me some degree of satisfaction.  I feel like I'm still on that proverbial road to success and I still have a long way that I can go with time now running out.  Not knowing when my time will run out puts me at some disadvantage though still I would have to ask one question:   If I knew the end of my story would I be more likely to achieve the success of which I dream?

         Let's face it, success can sometimes be pretty arbitrary and it's never guaranteed for most of us.  Many years ago I decided that while I could aspire and admire the success of others, my own success was what I would recognize it to be.   Over the years I've been pleased with a good many of my career accomplishments.  Maybe they were not especially impressive to many when compared to the success of others, but my success worked for me and most importantly I've never just stopped to bask in the sunshine of what I've achieved.  There's more to come I hope and I hope my dreams will not be thwarted too soon.

        As the song "Success" asks, "Will they remember me or leave me far behind?"  Riches and fame are nice, but what will my legacy be?   And even if I am remembered by a few if only just for a short time, I don't think that memory matters as much as the life I lived while I was living it.  Success is mostly a personal measurement and that's what is most meaningful to any of us.  I've enjoyed my life and want to continue to enjoy many more years of accomplishment.   What others think is important--I won't dismiss that fact.  But what I think about my life, what I've felt while living it, defines success on a personal level.

         I hope that I leave something worthwhile behind me.  I hope that I have contributed some modicum of positivity to the world.   I hope I have enjoyed my life once I have left it.  Hope--perhaps that's the most important thing we have.   A life without hope must be a dark place to be.

          What have been some of the successes to which you can lay claim in your life?   Do you continue to plan on future successes in your life?    Is the pursuit of success ultimately meaningless?

       Robin has been doing the Soundtrack of my Life posts on her blog Your Daily Dose.   I had done a few of my own "life soundtracks" on my Tossing It Out blog as well as the song series (starting at this post) I did for my 2014 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge on Wrote By Rote.  Be sure to visit and follow Your Daily Dose for more Life Soundtrack info.  I hope you'll also visit my current Battle of the Bands to vote on your favorite version of the Dan Hicks song "I Scare Myself".  

A Lifetime of Working

Female workers in an H. J. Heinz can factory stamping out end discs (the discs that fit on either end of each can). From the materials for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, held in Seattle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       A recent post at my blog Tossing It Out asked the question:  "What's the best job you ever had?".   As you might expect, a question of that nature can give rise to a great deal of reminiscing and remembering.  After all, work life and career is a major component of most of our lives.  In my post The Working Years I suggested that our time of working might be considered a specific stage of most of our lives.  Many of us spend so much time working or doing things related to work that I think the concept of a "stage of life" makes sense.

        When you examine the typical person with an extensive work history you can see how life in many ways is a build up to work, a stretch of time actually working, and hopefully some good years of retirement when what we've done in our work lives becomes a major part of who we are and what our interests continue to be.  Work and career often appear in a memoir or even becomes the focal point of a life story.

         Our childhood years are taken up with school years that prepare our minds and our sense of socialization to one day become good workers.  As children we dream of things we'd like to be one day and occupations that we might pursue.  This can change of course--and usually does--but still the dreams and the education are all part of the preliminary steps we take until we've made an actual job decision.

         Sometimes the job decisions are what is right for us while some are lessons in what we thought we might like and didn't.   A good many of our jobs are a matter of the necessity of making a paycheck to pay the bills.   How we approach these jobs makes the big difference in what we can get out of those jobs even if they are not part of the career path we are pursuing.   "Attitude is everything" is a philosophy that makes a lot of sense and is important to our sense of happiness and what we take away as gain from a job.

         Some of us start working when we're still kids--newspaper delivery, lawn mowing, babysitting, and so on.  This is great for having spending money early on, but more importantly the instilling of good work ethic and positive social interaction will usually have a big influence on the kind of workers we are throughout our lives.

        The very acts of looking for jobs, exploring career opportunities, and gaining necessary education can be the basis of many interesting memoir stories that can entertain as well as be helpful to others who might be facing similar circumstances as described in a story they are reading.

         If we consider that every job has value, our outlook towards work begins to change.  We might envy some workers without knowing that they hate their jobs.  Perception can play tricks on us that create misunderstandings about things we don't know enough about.  Unless we investigate a career thoroughly, we might step into what we consider a dream job only to discover that it's really a nightmare.   If nothing else, that's another good story as well as a learning experience.

        We might as well give opportunities a chance when they afford themselves to us.  Job-hopping has become the norm for most of us in the modern age.  With instability in the economy and job market, a working lifetime with the same company has become much less common than it once was.  Likewise, call it a restless spirit or short attention span or whatever else you like, many of us are ready to move on to a new job after a period of time.

           Jobs are as vital as they ever were, but the nature of work and the attitudes of workers have changed.  People want money and security, but they also want freedom and a certain degree of say so in their own lives.   I've spent a good part of my life working for others, but I was fortunate to have several jobs that I really liked.   I was also fortunate to have had a realistic and positive attitude toward most of my jobs.   When I didn't have that then I got out of what I was doing and found something else that suited me better.

           There is no such thing as the perfect job.  However there are some jobs to which we are very well suited and that makes a huge difference in how we look back upon those jobs when we no longer work at them.   Money is nice and even essential from a practical standpoint.  Great money is desirable.  In the end though, job satisfaction probably is the most important thing of all.  The way we feel about what we do has a strong bearing on the over all quality of our lives.

          Have you appreciated the jobs that you have had in your life?   What do you think are the qualities of an ideal job?   What would cause you to quit a job?

     

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The Working Years: Out on Our Own

The life stages (beach picture, beach scene in Wiek) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

           This post is the third in the series The Stages of Life for the Purpose of Memoir.   In the introductory post I suggested that life can be broken down into four major stages when writing memoirs.  So far we have looked at Memories of Baby Life:  Do We Have Accurate Recall? and School Days: Building Who We Are.  You can click on the three links to read these posts if you missed them.

Leaving Home

          Whether we go on to work after high school or defer work to go to college first, most of us at some point will cut our ties with living in our parental home and move on to a life on our own.  These are typically the years of work.   Many of us will go on into relationships with others and often that will result in marriage and families as we become responsible for raising our own children.   No longer seen so much as children of our parents, we now have our own identities with new roles in which others see us.

           Leaving home often begins with going away to college, doing a stint in the military, or some adventure that is a preliminary step to our career life.  The adjustment of setting out on one's own can provide fine material for memoir.  These can be humorous times or periods of doubt, fear, and angst.   Whichever way we look at this transition stage, it can be a time filled with love, loss, and learning.  This part of our life is often a great story that we can share in order to help or entertain others and provide lessons in life to others who may need them for their own growth or to understand their own past.

Revealing Our Identity

         Eventually we enter into that period of life that most identifies who we are as others see us.   We may enter into the careers that bring us recognition in the circles of those who know us.  Our stories of how we made it in life and what we accomplished can be very interesting to others.  Those stories may consist of success or failures, but with the memoir we should be able to use the important experiences to help bring revelation to those who hear our tales.  Anecdotes about our working careers can teach others or stir emotions within them.   For many of us our jobs define who we are and give us a big part of our life stories.

         The current generation is not as rooted as previous generations when it comes to career.  Some of us may have worn many hats in our working life as we've hopped from job to job.  There are many stories in this scenario.  A memoir of work life can be many things and portrayed in many ways.  Whether the memoirist is attempting to entertain with humor or teach with instruction or whatever else, a mixed job bag can be like a diamond mine of writing possibilities.

         Adult life is not all work.  There can be stories of love, struggles with health, political involvement, parenting--you fill in your own blanks.  What was most significant during your most active adult years?   You may have a special story that you need to tell about those years.  Or you may have many stories.  The stories are there when you start digging for them and they all have the potential to be interesting.

           Do you think that our work is generally what most defines who we are?   What are some kinds of  stories that you think could be most helpful to others?    Can you think of examples of inspirational stories of working, parenting, or other aspects of adult life?    Do you prefer a memoir that is humorous, uplifting, or educational?

    

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