Work Versus Criativity

Girls is one of the many television series I enjoy watching in my computer. One particular episode resonated with me. Warning: probable spoilers ahead if you only watched like, three episodes. So Hannah got into this really awesome job after a series of job failures because the economy is tough and blah, blah, blah. It was a great experience for her because she got to work as a copywriter. For those who enjoy writing and want to be writers, this is one of the stepping stones, it seems.

However, Hannah notices all her coworkers had once wanted to be writers like she does. She also notices they all lost the spark that seems to define young, wannabe writers. She becomes curious about the phenomena and wonders what happened. Why did they all stop writing in their spare time?

I won't spoil any further. My point is that I do feel like Hannah's coworkers when it comes to writing for fun, which is something I do enjoy and want to keep doing (hence the blog). The phenomena starts whenever I get a job. 

You know, those activities that provide money in exchange for your time, productivity, patience (in general, your entire life), which in turn is something that allows me to buy food, which in turn is something that keeps my mind active, which is something that allows me to get more work to get more money to get, instead of food, some other things that make life easier so that I can work some more.

It seems my mind can only do one or the other. If I do have stable or at least constant work, I cannot find the time to work on my creative projects. I cannot write something that makes me happy at the same time I am putting some of my time towards work. I started noticing this when I worked in a call center. I thought that it must be the awful work that entailed that was killing my creativity, making me not make the most of the time I got for myself after that horrible part-time speaking non-stop on the phone.

No, it happens on any job. There's not enough space inside my head to write towards two different goals. At least not enough so that the second goal of writing for fun can one day get me a bestseller to allow me to just write for fun forever and ever until I get to do the other things that got shoved to the back of my mind.

I am managing to balance it all these days. I've been slowly including my freelance work into my routine and I am enjoying being a digital nomad. That's what's making me think all of this. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up the productivity while having time to do things so that I can write about them, while also continuing my healthy routine of sleeping early, going for walks, and so on.

Quite the exercise, this has been.

Vanessa