We had the good fortune of connecting with Kathi Diamant and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kathi, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
The last time I had a nine-to-five job was in 1979.

After getting my BA in theatre in 1974, I worked a number of jobs that exhausted or bored me.
In the midst of an existential crisis, I signed up for a self-actualization course that promised to help me define who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. At the end, I decided that I wanted to be a professional performer, I began to focus on doing what I like, and what I am good at,

In the five decades since, I worked on what interested me, regardless of pay. I looked for opportunities that allowed me to invest in my talents and gifts, which allowed me to build skills that were unique and gave me a niche. I have worked to make sure that what I am doing is meaningful to me, and that it was something that I could contribute to others.

As with a financial portfolio, diversification has been key. Over the years I have built my skills as an actor, television host/interviewer, freelance journalist, author, emcee, writing instructor, book editor, and teacher of tai chi and qigong. All of these jobs are rewarding to me, so even as I work, I am fulfilling my needs as a human being.

Work is work, but when I am engaged in doing something I love, or consider important or necessary, the work is a product of who I am, or who I am becoming. So with my “spare” time I have the energy to volunteer, to travel, and most importantly, as I have learned, to do absolutely nothing at all. One of my favorite mantras is that I am a human being, not a human doing.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I haven’t had a full time 9-5 job since 1979. I had earned a BA in Theatre Arts in 1974 and five years later I was working as an insurance clerk for a mobile home company. Miserable at my lack of direction, I took a weekend workshop to pinpoint what I wanted to do with my life and concluded I wanted to be a professional performer. Shortly after, I landed a job in broadcasting, hosting a morning talk show on a CBS affiliate in North Carolina, an amazing career that moved me to two more morning talk shows in California. That experience allowed me to interview people who were passionate about what they were doing, a decade-long crash course in life and listening. In 1990, my morning show in San Diego was cancelled, and I took the opportunity to follow my own passion. I became a travel writer in order to research a mystery I had discovered in a college class, a mystery which had haunted me. After devoting two decades of my free time to this mystery, I made enough discoveries to write a book, which helped change literary history. The book, Kafka’s Last Love, was published in 2003, and has since been translated into German, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Portuguese, Arabic, and more languages. Because of my research, I became a university lecturer at two San Diego universities. I’ve been invited to many countries to talk about my research and discoveries. That’s been my avocation.

In order to earn money while working on the book, I’ve worked numerous different gigs. I’ve worked as an actor, travel and tour director, tai chi and qigong teacher, book club facilitator, Airbnb host, freelance writer and editor, PBS on air fundraising host, and more. Diversification has been essential. When I hosted morning television talk shows, I also acted in plays at night. I worked as a freelance journalist while starting the Kafka Project at SDSU. I taught qigong at the YMCA while teaching writing for an adult learning center. Even now, in my seventh decade, I work as an on-air PBS fundraising anchor and manage 3 short- and mid-term rentals I designed and built on our property. It’s all fun or at least work I like to do, or is good for me to do, with people I like working with.

One thing I am sure of: we can create our own life paths. In 1985, in the midst of an existential crisis, I heard Joseph Campbell (Hero with a Thousand Faces) speak at a mythology conference in Athens, Greece. I learned how we are all the heroes of our own journeys. He gave me a road map for my own soul to design.. My path is still unfolding and while I know how I got here, it amazes me how magical it has been, how one thing leads on to the next, and how much we make our own opportunities.
Now I’m thinking of what I want to continue to do going into my 80s and beyond, and have realized that Tai Chi, which I’ve taught since 2008, is fabulous. The older I get, the better I am at it. Now I teach essential exercise to students who come to my garden, and I get paid while I practice it myself.

The accomplishment of which I am most proud is the founding of the Kafka Project @ San Diego State University in 1998. After learning of Kafka’s missing literary treasure in college in 1971, I made it my mission to do everything I could to recover the treasure and rewrite a forgotten woman back into history. Five decades later, the Kafka Project @ SDSU is alive and well, centered in Berlin with German government and academic cooperation. The challenges have been legion, but the answer is the same: Persevere. Kafka said, “As long as you keep climbing, there will be stairs. They will magically appear under your climbing feet.”

My favorite bit of advice comes from the Scottish-Himalayan expedition of 1951:

“Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.'”

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
As an Airbnb host near downtown San Diego, I offer advice often. San Diego has so much to offer: 70 miles of beaches, Balboa Park with 17 museums, mountains less than an hour to the east, and Baja Mexico 20 minutes to the south. Besides the San Diego Zoo, which even at $65 per ticket is well worth the price, San Diego offers excellent theatre and concerts. I recommend the free rehearsals at the new Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, an open-air music venue operated by the San Diego Symphony at the Embarcadero Marina Park South. I recommend taking the ferry from Broadway Pier to Coronado, a $14 roundtrip, leaving on the hour, returning on the half-hour throughout the day. Once on Coronado Island you can rent a bike and ride to the Hotel Del and down Orange Ave. My new favorite neighborhood is Barrio Logan, with wonderful shops, home to Ciccia Osteria, a charming, affordable, Michelin-rated Italian restaurant, and to Chicano Park, a 7 acre community space with the largest collection of outdoor murals in the United States, designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Kathleen B. Jones, Professor Emerita, former Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at SDSU and director of the first women’s studies program in the nation, took me and the Kafka Project under the wing of the Dean’s Office, and gave me and the Kafka Project an academic home. Her support and belief in me made possible all my future efforts in researching a literary mystery and writing a book. She has just published her seventh book, a first novel: Cities of Women, published by Keylight Books.

Website: Www.kafkaproject.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kdiamant

Image Credits
Kathi Diamant

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