Time to Make the Leap

"The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground." -Chogyam Trungpa

I resigned yesterday from my full-time job as a copywriter in an ad agency. I've tried to give a concise reason as for why I would leave a job that I like, with people I like, and a salary that is dependable and steady. Alas, I have failed to be concise, but I think the following is clear.

Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel J. Levitin, among others, are proponents of the following theory:

"...ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is roughly equivalent to three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."
from This Is your Brain on Music

After thorough investigation and tabulation, I discovered the following about myself:

I have 13,170 hours of practice in music, but only 5,169 hours in vocal technique/study.

My boss told me on Friday that she wanted to make sure I didn't quit too quickly and then wonder “what if”. For two days I thought “what if?”, “what if...what?” I never wanted a career specifically in advertising. I can start writing at any other time, study it any other time, do it any other time. And right now, I have a whole bag of “what ifs”: What if I had left my job three years ago and dedicated 4 hours a day to my singing? Where would I be now?

The numbers above summarize me perfectly: an excellent musician and a good singer. I don't want to be good. I want to be excellent. I want to be Callas. And in three years, if I dedicate 4 hours a day to my singing, I will have reached 10K.

Daniel Gilbert, psychologist and author of Stumbling on Happiness says that we never regret what we do, we regret what we don't do: inaction. Therefore, and because it seems right now some stars have aligned, and there are opportunities that I must follow, I must leave my job. I have to leave it because I cannot let financial fear define who I am. I have to leave because I cannot let one of my best traits—my perseverance, my refusal to quit—become one of my worse enemies—losing sight of my goals, losing perspective, not being able to tell apart what I can do from what I want to do and what I should do.

So I'm off to a 10K hour journey to excellence.