Issue #7 - Lucky
I wonder: if great work requires a team, as I previously wrote about and hypothesized, what is the best course of action now that I find myself in uncertain territory? When should one go public?
Let's break both options down. And probably, along the way, break the dichotomy.
First option: form a new team anyways. The obvious time sink is the fact that it takes a lot of time to see if you "click" with new people, especially creatively. I mean, that's a pretty stupid reason, if it works out on a long enough time scale. The other problem is with the linguistic requirements - I can't really speak the local language sufficiently for the type of work I aim to do. Perhaps this could be to my benefit. I've always thought that piano lessons taken without student might produce superior students.
One thing I'm wondering is if working on a team is a skill itself, or if teams naturally form. Does the same skillset that enables my proficiency on one team naturally carry over to any other team I might find myself on? Is to do so to pigeonhole myself into one possible "role"? Two thoughts on the matter: firstly, that unnatural teams (by their name), do not occur in nature. We are formed in unnatural groups and are taught to expect to work with people we would not in any normal situation, as this skillset (or rather, tolerance build-up), enables employees to work for an employer. What sort of genuine intellectual work functions in this way? What real, genuine contributions to humanity have been made by people forced together? What I fear is that maximizing my efficacy in any team is actually counteractive to the potential outcomes of a real "match", much in the same way the skill sets between dating and marriage are quite different. However, this stubborn attitude is exactly what leads so many people to reflect their biases, leading to exclusion of otherwise important minority groups. Occasionally, too, the combination of two cultures produced a third culture that maintains the best aspects of the previous two.
On the other hand, however, I should be humble enough to realize that stochasticity can occur, and placing myself in random situations is more likely to induce real life knowledge than merely theorizing about it. For that reason, here, I've already made my decision on what I should do going forward: I'll try to form a new team. I'll continue the essay for further searches.
Second option: I can take the perspective that the time I have now is basically invaluable in the context of my long-term, and that I should keep my head down and practice in solitude. Although this route offers no near-term reward (in the form of a produced, public product, or money (what agony!)), it likely will better prepare me to produce when I am in a more stable condition to produce with others.
I did not react positively to the cold logic of the previous paragraph. I want to make things, I want to work with others, I want to show people, I want to be rewarded for it. Realistically, there's no reason why I could not do both. I'm happy with this resolution, and I think it's a rather lucky one. My life is very fortunate. Thank you for reading.