Christian Major

No more 10,000 hours!! November 8, 2009

Posted by christianmajor in Uncategorized.
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I am very excited about some new things going on and I wanted to share. This blog post is a little long and it’s all about me, but my hope is that realizing these things about myself will give me the ability to give a greater service to you the reader. Please bear with me. You might enjoy this story.

I have had to step up my game lately. The 10,000 hours project you have been reading about has taught me a huge lesson.

That lesson is this: I can’t do it the way I’ve been doing it.

In the previous posts for 10,000 hours,[a quest to spend as much time as possible focused on art] I was doing all that while working at least 50 to 60 hours a week. I have medical bills to pay, a wife to support, pets to feed, and I want to get the occasional starbucks.

At the same time I love art! I moved to Southern Pines to pursue my art career! It was supposed to work so perfectly! When it turned out less than perfect, I pushed harder. I can do both I thought. I can work more than full time and let art and drawing fill in any little gap of spare time. I had to. We only get one life and we must make the most of it.

But, I missed a key component of my “10,000 hours program” …..

I’m already there. I’m already finished. I’m ready to move on, and it’s not with art.

Don’t get me wrong, I love great art with a passion and I still plan on spending lots of time working on that skill, but that is not what I have already worked 10,000 hours to get started.

To tell you what it is, I need to start from the beginning.

It starts at church, after the sermon. I’m 5 years old and singing “I heard it through the grape vine” through the microphone up on stage.

It starts at church during a sermon. I’m 7 years old and I draw the scene of the crucifixion. Not too bad for a seven year old.

It starts in a mango tree in Bolivia. I am 9 years old and reading. I’m reading for hours and hours. I read anything I can get my hands on. I read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, books about dinosaurs, planes, space, the ocean, the jungle. I read “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories. I read anything and everything!

It starts while I’m sitting at the computer. I’m 10 years old and I need to learn MSDOS to be able to play the fun games.

It starts in a smokey guitar shop. I am 15 years old and flat-picking “Sailor’s Hornpipe” on the guitar. I go from learning folk/blue grass to rock and roll to classical guitar in my first year of college.

It starts in the highschool library. I’m 16 and a friend explains HTML programing to me. It seems pretty straight forward.

It starts on the highschool auditorium stage. I’m 17 and I have a great speaking role as Doc in “Westside Story.”

It starts on a 747. I’m 19 and discover a love for travel when I spend a couple weeks on my own backpacking through London, Edinborough and Oxford. I want to go back soon.

It starts at community college. I’m 21 and a professor offers me a position teaching CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. I didn’t take it, I moved on.

It starts at Barnes and Nobles. I’m 22 and the couches are a poor replacement for a mango tree, but I read. I read all the business books, all the finance and stock market books, all the self help books,  My role models other than my dad became John Maxwell, David Allen, Brian Tracy, Stephen Covey and Napoleon Hill

It starts at NC State University. I’m 24 and a college graduate. They let me piece together my design, programming, communication, art history, and music classes to form a degree called “Arts Applications”. If NCSU had considered my Barnes and Noble education, I wouldn’t have been too far from an MBA.

It starts at work. I’m 26, a couple years out of college and I feel like a square peg. What am I supposed to do now? I plan out my next 5 years and see myself in art school under the best artists. In retrospect I see now that I have a strong desire to plan things out and make things better.

It starts at a wedding. I’m 27 and my beautiful bride is walking the aisle on green grass. I have to take care of two now.

It starts in a doctors office in June. I am 28 and I had just been through two major surgeries in 4 months dealing with testicular cancer and not knowing what is coming next. I have just been told I am completely cancer free! I sit outside on a bench alone and rejoice in the grace that has brought me through these 28 years.

This is me. This is my 10,000 hours. This is my education. I have pursued all my interests with resolute dedication.

I am moving into a new season. Thanks to a couple of good friends here in Southern Pines I have an office, a phone line, a computer and an opportunity to develop a business and develop businesses. I am absolutely thrilled about this because all business is is people serving people. And to serve and help others to serve better and more effectively is an exciting thing!

You might ask what I do. The story I just told will help explain, it’s not what I do, but how I do it.