Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work
Written and Narrated By: Steven Pressfield
Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins
Is it time to stop being a hobo and get a real job? Dare I say it: Become a Professional?
First, lest you get all PC on me (And I’m the PC Queen!), author Steven Pressfield takes us down a Kerouac On the Road-ian rabbit hole whereby he’s living in a halfway house then is joining migrant workers and picking apples during the season. He lives in shacks, he visits friends who live in their trucks (With the all-important camper shell!), he communes with a feral cat who looks upon him with disdain as he (Pressfield, not the cat) squats down and cooks his sparse meal over a small fire of pine needles. HEEEEE gives us an exact definition and differentiation between the following: Hobo, Tramp, and Bum. Yessss, there are differences and don’t go around ticking people off by interchanging them and such-all.
And then Pressfield goes on and on and on about the difference between Addicts/Amateurs, and Artists/Professionals. If you’re not living an authentic Life, if you choose to numb your life, squelch your dreams, let the Shadow Self preside? Dude, you are sooooo an Addict and dooooo take some time to consider Starting to Live and Turn Pro.
I haaaave to admit that I’ve got Pressfield’s much-lauded The War of Art, and I’ve even listened to it, but gosh how my mind wandered at the time. It’s sooo into Resistance being our only problem, whether that be procrastination, addictions, etc. etc. et freaking c. Here, addictions as distractions are covered in spades. He makes no distinction between drugs, alcohol, relationships, and seeking One True Love, all the way to spending all your time and energy pursuing ridiculous carrots dangling from the 9-5 Workday Stick; doesn’t matter: If you’re throwing all your energy and focus into what’s NOT making your Soul live and breathe and shout with Joy, and if you’re not fully embracing the AGONY of creative work then, gosh, you ain’t truuuuly a person. Ya ain’t Pro yet.
The Assassination of JFK? 9-11? Do you remember where you were when those (or one of them) happened? Well, you’ll remember the very day, what you were doing, when you turned Pro. And apPARently it involves a lot of pain as Epiphanies are NOT Aha-Moments, lights in a very dark tunnel, but instead bring agony about what you see when you really DO take stock of who you are. We’re a disgusting lot, I s’pose, sordid and lazy and wallowing around in all sorts of distractions…
Most of this is just brieeeeeef “chapters” which are simply a concept and then muscular musings. The man is NOTHING If NOT a He-Man, sitting in $100-a-month roach-infested apartments, the sink filling up with dirty dishes, a rusty Smith Corona beckoning ominously, and a cat named Moe sitting to the left of the barely used typewriter. We have ugly Souls and become authentic ONLY when we take the necessary steps to overcome Resistance in all its many guises, embrace our Muses, do the work (Which, actually, is the name of ANOTHER of his treatises on how laziness gets a person NOwhere…).
Also be expected to discover the sorry truth that: There’s no such things as a Tribe, or Mentors, or Gurus, or whatever. People are just human and are just as fearful as the next person, so let us NOT give our power over to them. Imagine: You’ve slaved eeeeons over a creative project, have a genius idea, and then you punt it over to a group, or a much-admired person, and they dump all over it! Nooo, we’re on our own with our own Muses, our own Journeys, our own Lives as Pros.
In keeping with the muscular style is Pressfield’s delivery of his own words. Huzzah, an instance where author as narrator works. Still, it’s like hearing whomever it was of that Oft-Quoted: “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.” You want easy? Pressfield is here to growl that it ain’t now, ain’t never gonna be THAT. Plus, he’s here to preface each of over NINETY numbered “chapters” as tho’ each was a question. “12?” “36?” “88?” I know I know I know, but it really irritated me, so sue me…
ANYway, worthy little audiobook that was a trifle inspiring and motivating, even if I did think he DESperately wanted to be Jack Kerouac but was a tad too late.
And by the way? He DOES mention Donald Trump (Alongside Charlie Sheen) when he says that people can even be addicted to themselves. One popular reviewer Boooooed this and chucked her copy in the trash for some homeless person to find as she decried the book becoming Political. I feel compelled, comPELLed I say, to point out to this disgruntled (non)reader that: HEY Ms. Just Getting Around to This in 2020! Turning Pro was published in 2012, get it? Looooong before that Borderline Personality and sociopath was dividing the country that I love. And yessssss, he was indeed a Narcissist back in 2012, back in 2000, back when he was yea-high to an ant and throwing rocks at toddlers in the yard next to his.
Whoops, did I just lose you?
Listen to the book: I’m just being True to My Authentic Non-Shadow Self.
And it looks like I indeed AM going to remember the very day I Turned Pro…!
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