Obviously, painfully staged photo of Michael James Schneider
photo by Summer Olsson

10 months ago, I left my safety net in a career that I had for 20 years, and that I was great at. I put my career on pause for a few months to pursue things that only fulfilled me artistically and creatively, and I knew I was starting from the ground up: I’ve never been trained as a painter, as a writer, or as a set designer or interior decorator (if you’re using The Internets for the very first time, congratulations! You can click any of those red words to see examples of my stuff). Was it scary? Hell yes. Did I second guess myself? Uh, yeah, constantly. But before I started making art, I used to feel like I was complacent, sleepwalking through life.

For about a month after I left my job, I treated it like a vacation. “I’m gonna go to New York for a couple of weeks and live it up!” “I’m gonna sit on my ass all day and read back issues of McSweeney’s!” “I’m going to take about 800 pictures of my cat Ned!” But I quickly realized that I was my own boss now, I would have to give myself the daily kick in the pants to motivate myself. So I wrote down my plan, and then set it in motion. I started this blog about the journey, opened up my Etsy shop. Then the tour of my LA apartment was published on Apartment Therapy…and then the shit hit the fan. It sent me reeling, and made me flee Los Angeles for softer pastures. For awhile there “How are you doing, Mike?” was a bit of a loaded question that people started being afraid to ask, lest I burst into tears.

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Here’s why:It’s all about the journey, dummy. I know, that’s the biggest cliche in the world, but there’s a reason it’s said so often, and rings so true when we hear it. The person I, or you, or anyone is, well, that’s not the same person we were 10, or 20 years ago. Much in the same way that animals evolve to adapt to stresses in their environment, we all adapt emotionally, creatively when life throws us curveballs. We all are products of our upbringing, we’re all the sum of the love we have known and the love we have lost. And we’re all the end result of whatever shit we’ve encountered in our lives. Fact.

But the trick is how we process it. Does adversity, challenge, struggle make us more cynical, harder, less authentic? Or does it make us more resilient, smarter, and more seasoned and sincere? I really think that it’s a choice we face…I know that I’ve never had as hard a time emotionally as I have the last months of 2012, the first months of this year, and it changed me in ways I’m still discovering, still surprised by (I have ideas for the next phase of my life, and my art, that far surpasses anything I have created so far. It’s on a bigger scale than I thought myself capable of, and it’s bold. I can’t wait to put it in motion. BOR-ing!). The events of the past few months, while painful and challenging, have served to shake me awake. I feel strong, and healthy, and happy. Here’s the thing, though: I know I’d lose the best part of me if I got jaded and bitter. And I really believe that it’s something we have control over.

Is it a product of society, of our culture, that teaches us that the end result is the priority? Is it our education system, full of gold stars and A++’s that forms how we view achievement at an early age? Probably. I can think of very few examples of “journey-oriented” reward systems that I’ve experienced, Jennie Kay’s Ungame notwithstanding. Maybe that’s the problem…or maybe not. It’s been my experience that once we’re adults, we learn better by doing, by trying and failing, more than just reading about a thing. Maybe we all need to learn this lesson for ourselves, that the journey has value (sometimes greater than the end result), for it to really stick with us.

Last night I was witness to a celebration of someone who had woken up, taken a step similar to me 2 or 3 years ago, and was reaping great rewards from that risk. It was so encouraging to see that her attitude was one of extreme gratitude and thankfulness, even though from all reports it wasn’t an easy or quick journey. That’s rare, but I think at the root of it is humility, and perseverance. It takes guts to smile while in the struggle.

And that’s it. No thunderclap, no big reveal. I’m just musing out loud, and freshly inspired. Portland is going to be very good for me, I think. It’s not going to be easy. Nothing worth it ever is. But I think this city, while it may have seemed so odd, and eccentric, and unfamiliar to the person I was a year ago, now fits me like a glove and has shaken me out of a months-long, maybe even lifelong torpor.

I’m wide awake.