"Education by total experiential immersion in the reality of your choice - that's the only way to go when one has a long way to go."

I read this passage from My Big Toe by Thomas Campbell and overlayed its meaning onto this development/building/career path I've been on for a few years now. He shared this quote in the context of consciousness development, and while it resonates there, it also resonates in the context of my professional journey.

I have a dream - working for myself, without financial strain, totally location and time independent, not reliant on other people (as much as is reasonable). I can't wake up tomorrow and do that. But, I can act today on what I think I know. Then, I can collect feedback and iterate. But in order to collect feedback, I have to put things out there. Putting myself out there has always been the hard part.

Looking at the quote in the context of my work, I'm a long way from where I want to be. So I choose to immerse myself in creativity as I know it.

I have this mental framework. It's a hierarchy of how to achieve a vision. At the top of the hierarchy is the vision. To realize a vision, goals have to be accomplished. In order to accomplish goals, creative artifacts have to be produced. In order to create an artifact, daily behaviors have to be performed. In reverse order, I have to perform behaviors every day like reading, writing, and coding. These behaviors create artifacts like apps, blogs, and concrete (written) ideas. These artifacts roll up to accomplish goals like shipping an app to the App Store and building an income producing side project. If I accomplish enough of these goals, I will achieve my vision of doing creative work anywhere, anytime, producing more money than I need to get by, without relying on other people. An important catch in this process is to gather feedback and iterate. Most people call this learning. Without learning and iteration, advancement doesn't happen.

I follow these behaviors, and I immerse myself in the experience. Once something is created and out in the world, it continues to work on my behalf forever without any more effort from me.

The more of these seeds get created, the higher the likelihood one sprouts into something. The more that sprout, the higher the likelihood one of my goals is accomplished. The more goals I accomplish, the higher the likelihood I manifest my vision.

While getting nice feedback from my friends and family feeds my ego, there is a deeper sense of knowing that doesn't require any written or spoken feedback. When I articulate a strong idea clearly, or I share something that can provide value to the world, I just know. There is a hard to describe sense of "yea that's it."

That intuition that provides feedback tells me the vision is a real destination. It's attainable, but it's not right in front of me...yet. Because it's so far away, as Thomas Campbell said, education by immersion is the only way to go when you're far from the destination. So here I am making an effort to immerse myself in these behaviors that I think will take me to the promised land, learn and iterate along the way, and trust that I'll navigate closer to the destination as I learn the conditions.