Leading a creative life

I watched the movie "wall street" for the first time tonight.  I watched part of it this morning at work, but then I had to start actually doing things so I watched the rest of it tonight.  In the morning it was extremely inspiring.  At work I'm a "business coordinator" aka salesman.  To quote the movie "if you call people asking for money you're a salesman."  

Brokers are salesmen too, we are just selling different things.  I was really motivated by the way stock brokers on wall street know everything about everything - they spend so much time collecting information to make the selling that much easier.  A salesman has to be a market analyst, a finance specialist, and a psychologist all at the same time.  We have to know the meaning behind people's words; we have to know everything that is happening in the market the moment it happens; we have to be able to talk $.  

The team that I'm working with doesn't have that aura of superiority that I get from watching stock brokers in the movies (Ok I haven't really met a stock broker, so all of this is just speculation based on movies - smart. I know.) They don't spend extra free minute looking up the latest industry news, testing the newest technology and game, or even playing our own games.  They've never played the product that we sell.  They don't care and they don't think that working extra hard and being all knowing will do anything.  Today I tried to change their minds.  I was sure that if we take the cut-throat attitude of stock brokers and applied it to ourselves in this market we would become the best video game licensing team out there.  

That idea died quick.

Then I watched the second half of the movie.  The glorified billionaire life of the stock broker gets quickly beat down and the final theme is revealed:  positive creation is the only thing that gives meaning to any work.  Meaningful work involves the creation of something.  Stock brokers that only have money in mind do not care about the companies they are selling are bad - they only care that money flows so they can take a percentage.  There is nothing created in the process, nothing good happened - no one benefited from the "work" and yet the broker made money.  Sure, one side makes money and the other loses it but just because of the stock market system, not because someone made something useful and the other failed.  

Instead of feeling great about my sales job, at the end of the day I find myself questioning the meaning behind it all.  "Never judge a man by the size of his wallet" - and yet I find myself judging my own success or failure based on the size of my apartment, the clothes that I wear, and the amount of money I have in my bank account.  I can feel myself falling into the money trap - falling away from a creative lifestyle and instead into a lifestyle of consumption.  I wasn't doing this a year ago; a year ago I felt exhilerated at my own curiosity, my daringness to come to China and explore, and the me that makes music, makes friends, learns new languages, writes thought provoking articles, and has so many ideas about how to make this world a better place.  Now I find myself judging my own success or failure based on if I can sell a game this year, how many I can sell, and how much I can sell it for.  Does it no longer matter that I spent a year working in a foreign country in a foreign language?  Was it worth it to put away my guitars to get dusty?  Was it worth it to get out of shape and slowly lose touch with sports and my own spirituality?  How many good friends do I have right now?  Are none of these as important as my career?  What's happened to me? 

I pride myself on working hard in every situation.  My friend today mentioned that even when I play soccer I am very serious, and it's true! Even when I'm supposed to be having fun, making friends, and getting a good workout at the same time I find myself arrogant instead and unforgiving of mistakes.  At work I get annoyed when other people are spending too much time being unproductive.  Can't I work hard but at the same time respect the way that other people live their life?  I can just be a role model and try to positively influence people with my own hard work but also my good attitude, but I don't.  Is this how I always was, or have my values changed? 

Something else that really caught me off guard was that idea of creation... however right now I'm too tired and lost my train of thought about that when some other unexpected ideas came up.  Oh well, I'll talk about it when I come back from the beach this weekend.  I hope the time at the beach will be enough to gather my thoughts again and regroup myself.