I
find that my life fluctuates between two internal states: war and peace.
War feels like being fired, falling sick, or getting a divorce. It feels like stress,
wanting, desire, dissatisfaction, danger, or being off-balance.
Peace feels like finding a new job, becoming healthy again, or entering a new and loving
relationship. It feels like satisfaction, contentment, satiation, or love.
War feels like being asked a question, and peace feels like finding an answer.
And although I want everlasting peace, I find war to be the dominant state of my internal
life. War acts as a necessary precursor to peace. To better navigate the battle within,
I plan to take quotes from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, combine them with my own life
experience, and create an original set of principles.
I attempt not to reduce actual war to the level of ordinary occurrences, but to elevate
ordinary occurrences to the level of war—imbuing them with the significance I believe they
deserve.
***
(1) War is always possible.
In 2014, a recession hit the city.
In September of 2015, I walked through the university campus without a care in the world.
The sun hung high in the sky, the cork trees had bloomed into fullness, and the smell of
my coffee floated through the air. I had been one of the lucky ones who landed and completed
an internship over the summer, and I looked forward to starting the final year of my degree.
I entered the mechanical engineering building and walked towards my classroom. A group of
students, roughly ten to fifteen, gathered outside the door. I stood with them, waiting
for the class before us to finish.
“How was your summer?” asked a friend. “I heard you worked with a big oil company.”
“Yeah, I did,” I said. “It was good. How was your summer? Did you work anywhere?”
“Nah, just relaxed. Do you think you’ll be going back?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Lucky,” he said, as the previous class exited the room. “Do you think you can hook
me up with a job?”
“I wish,” I said. “They’re only hiring back from their pool of interns.”
He frowned. “Dang, it’s hard right now.”
I nodded. We entered the classroom and took our seats.
Chatter filled the room—most of it about the summer and work.
Because of the recession, many students had not been able to land an internship for the
summer of 2015, and understandably, they stressed over getting a job for graduation.
Many of us took out loans to get our degrees, and we spent forty hours a week, for the last
three years, trying to graduate. Society had told us engineering was a reliable and practical
path to a good career, and in most cases, they would have been right. But we were in
the right space, at the right time, where the certain became uncertain.
But I didn’t stress over the recession. I had worked several internships with a good
company, and I even served as their campus ambassador. So I patiently waited to receive
an e-mail with the contract for a full-time position.
About a month into the semester, just before noon, I sat at the kitchen table with a coffee
in my hand. My computer beeped, notifying me that I had received an e-mail. It was from
the company. My heart raced, as I took a sip of coffee and opened the e-mail.
Dear students,
You have done wonderful work in the last few years. But due to the state of the economy,
we will not be hiring anyone.
After all the work I had put in, that’s all I got—two sentences. My heart sank.
I had foolishly assumed I was immune to war, and now it stood in front of me, and I had
not prepared.
(2) Watch for the warning signs of war.
After I had read the e-mail, I sat at the kitchen table and thought back to all the
red flags I had missed.
In 2014, on TV’s all around the city, news anchors spoke about a possible recession.
I never paid attention to them. I had lined up an internship for the summer of 2015, so
I thought it didn’t affect me.
In 2015, I worked at a big corporate office. Around coffee machines and in meetings, senior
employees talked about how difficult it would be for a student to get a full time job. But
I kept my head down and worked harder. If they only hire a few students, I’ll try
my best to be one of them, I thought.
And for my whole life, I had lived in a city that boomed and busted with the oil prices.
If I planned on working in the energy industry, I should have known that a bust would affect
me one day.
I had missed the warning signs, so the war caught me off guard.
(3) Avoid war at all costs, but when that’s not possible, engage in war on your terms.
Had I assumed war was possible and paid attention to the signs, I could have avoided it entirely,
or at least, I could have engaged it on my own terms.
I could have studied psychology or philosophy, worked toward a PhD, and possibly avoided
the recession altogether.
I could have worked internships in the HVAC or automotive industry, so when the recession
came, I had a better chance of landing a job in a less affected industry.
I could have applied to study or work in a city with more diverse opportunities.
But it was too late. The war had already arrived, so I prepared for battle and thought about
what to do next.
(4) Pick your battles.
The possibility of a thousand different battles flooded my mind, but I couldn’t afford to
fight them all. I pulled out a piece of paper from my bag and drew a line down the middle.
I wrote “work” on one-half and “school” on the other. On each side, I wrote down the
most important battles in the war.
I started with work: update my resume, apply for jobs, and network.
Then I listed the tasks I needed to finish for school: assignments, studying for tests,
and attending lectures.
The list functioned like a map, giving me a birds-eye view of the battlefield. Without
it, I could have neglected an important battle or misspent my energy.
(5) Spend energy wisely.
I knew I could work about eight hours every day without getting burnt out.
So I drew eight stars at the top of the page—each one representing an hour of time.
I decided to spend the majority of my time job hunting, because if I had won that battle,
the war would have ended right away. I scratched out five stars and distributed them among
the work activities.
Every day, I spent two hours working on my resume, two hours applying for jobs, and one
hour on networking.
I used the remaining three hours for school. I spent two hours doing assignments, and I
spent one hour studying for tests.
In the end, I allotted no time towards lectures. I realized early on that lectures were not
for me, because they cost more energy than they were worth.
Because I had created a sustainable plan, I kept up with the marathon of war. Each day
I got up, executed on the plan, and then rested. I never overextended or exhausted myself,
because I had no idea how long the war would last.
Eventually, I landed several interviews.
(6) Adjust the battle plan to end the war as fast as possible.
As interviews came up, I took out my plan and redirected how I spent my energy. I took
an hour away from assignments and an hour away from networking, and I used that time
to prepare for interviews.
I kept the goal in mind: obtaining a job. If I won that battle, I would’ve ended the
war as fast as possible. So I spent my energy as wisely as I could to obtain that—even
if that meant failing some assignments.
Eventually, I received another job offer and signed a contract.
(7) Be prepared for loss.
As soon as I signed the contract, I stopped searching for opportunities and redirected
my energy towards school. I focused on completing assignments, studying for tests, and finishing
my final design project—a mobile testing station for fire pumps.
Summer rolled around, and I graduated with a job in my hand. I even had a few months
to relax before work started. I planned to pay off my loans as quickly as possible and
move forward with my life.
In my mind, the war had ended.
But in the summer of 2016, a few months before I was about to start my new role, I received
a phone call from the woman who had hired me. “Hey Justin, sorry to say this, but
due to the worsening economic situation, we’ll have to cancel your contract.”
I wondered if that was even possible. She caught me so off-guard, I kind of just awkwardly
accepted it. I said something like, “oh, that’s unfortunate,” before we ended the
call.
She sent me an e-mail with an official letter, stating that they would be rescinding the
contract.
I tried negotiating with them, saying that I would be willing to start eight months later
as the economy picked up, but they stood firm in their decision.
For ten months, I believed I had a job. I thought I had won the battle and ended the
war, so my complacency made me an easy target. Even with a good battle plan, Chaos, the ultimate
tactician, snuck behind me and attacked my blind spot.
I mistakenly presumed the war ended, and so I had not prepared for this loss.
(8) You’re stronger than you think.
I stared at the e-mail. The major hiring months, September and January, had already passed.
The entire process left me jaded, and I decided, immaturely, that I would never place my future
in someone else’s hands ever again.
Later in life, I learned that my future would always be in someone else’s hands, at least
partly, but at the time, I needed to believe it wasn’t to remain strong.
After losing the job, I worked harder on a blog I had started. I taught myself to write,
animate, and edit videos, and eventually, I turned that blog into a full-time job.
Before I lost the job, I never thought I would be able to work for myself. But when I felt
I had no options left, I discovered a side of myself that could be self-sufficient and
thrive, a side capable of handling way more than I ever thought possible.
(9) Appreciate, enjoy, and nurture peace.
The entire ordeal showed me the fragility and beauty of peace.
Things that appeared stable, such as degrees, corporate jobs, and the economy, proved to
be more shaky than I had originally believed.
I came to believe that war was the natural state of life. Things naturally regressed
towards chaos, and peace only came because someone worked incredibly hard to bring it
and maintain it.
While my job search became a battleground, things that I had taken for granted, such
as a roof over my head, food on the table, my health, friends and family, laughter and
connection, became pockets of peace, within which I renewed my energy and found meaning.
War made me appreciate peace, and enjoying peace allowed me to keep up the war.
But like a garden, peace had to be nurtured and maintained, otherwise it decayed. I worked
hard to prevent the chaos in one area of my life from leaking into another. After I completed
my job search for the day, I spent time with my girlfriend, cleaned the house, cooked myself
a meal, exercised, and watched movies. In other words, I appreciated, enjoyed, and nurtured
the peace I still had in other areas of my life—instead of letting the recession entirely
consume me.
***
As I reflect on these nine principles,
(1) War is always possible. (2) Watch for the warning signs of war.
(3) Avoid war at all cost, but when that’s not possible, engage in war on your terms.
(4) Pick your battles. (5) Spend energy wisely.
(6) Adjust the battle plan to end the war as fast as possible.
(7) Be prepared for loss. (8) You’re stronger than you think.
(9) Appreciate, enjoy, and nurture peace.
I find they hold up for many difficult times in my life.
Even now, as I pursue a career in writing, I find myself falling back on these principles.
Every day, I get up and create a battle plan—a list of projects I need to work on.
Then I determine how to spread my energy across them.
Every morning, I reassess whether my plans are moving me towards my goals, and every
evening, I stop working at a set time, so I can appreciate, enjoy, and nurture the peace
in my life.
I keep in mind that the statistical likelihood of having a long, successful, and full-time
career as an artist is rare. Failure is likely, but with these principles, I have a good foundation
with which I can do battle.