Feed the Freak until it knows what will make it happy, and then tell the conservative side (in your best Tim Gunn style of course) to "Make it work!" My dream-put-down-word of choice is "Idealistic" and all of what I just said does sound pretty Idealistic. But what you have to remember is, ideals are what inspire most profoundly beautiful and worthwhile endeavors.

~Avery

And of course the conservative usually wins in the end. It's about survival. That's not a bad thing. Just harness that and put it to work in the service of supporting a wider range of survival needs. Make the freedom to be creative non-optional too.

Of course if you set up creativity as opposed to survival, your inner survivalist will boot it out of the nest when push comes to shove. That's it's job. But if you explain to them that they are both on the same team, you can align the two and harness the power of both to create a shared goal of freedom+security. You just need to catch that vision of them both being possible, and get both of those inner folks on board with it.

Heh, OK that just spouted out of my head. Hope it helps or sparks something that helps. Waterfalls are great!!

Emma

PS this splitting comments thing sucks!

I know you have the ability to build systems that run themselves. That's 90% of it. Take that, apply it to a for-profit business, make sure at every step that each of the moving parts are managed in a way that leaves you the freedom you want, and you end up creating a freedom-machine.

I'm right there with you with the conservative. No way would I be OK bumming it around for the kind of freedom I crave. I had to build the structure to support the security I need to feel safe and happy. But freedom was my goal through all of it.

It's totally possible to have both if you aim for both. It's seeing them as opposed that gets in the way. It's a common thing in our culture, to see freedom and security as opposites. But they aren't at all, they don't have to be.

Yay, waterfall!! My brain is like that too. When I did th StrengthsFinder test, "ideation" was my #1 strength.

Well–I have to say that this particular thing – the waterfall and the desire to follow it – is the very reason I started my business. It was THE idea behind being self-employed, and I engineering my business very purposefully to allow me a great deal of flexibility and free time to pursue whatever other projects I wanted to at the time, to live as completely from intrinsic motivation as possible (while of course, being able to pay my bills, buy a house eventually, etc). It was the #1 thing in my mind the whole time, and it took around 5 years to build it to the point where I wanted it, but it was worth it. And I'm always refining it.

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