Making Your Creative Life Work. Everyday.
I went to school to become a writer. I studied literature and composition and psychology in undergrad and creative writing and publishing arts in graduate school. I wore men’s thrift store sweaters and walked around with a moleskin in my pocket. I sat on park benches observing, people-watching, collecting. I’m just being a writer. I’m a writer. Right? Turns out you don’t get to wear that title on an armband everywhere you go, and being a writer looks less like a Kate spade briefcase and a tweed blazer and more like the green apron of a very well-known coffee spot.
That’s because being a writer for most writers is about making your writing life work. It’s about making your creative life work. It’s often an impossible and unrewarding task. It means having two jobs. Or three jobs. It means working at work and working at home. It means struggle and hustle and diminishing returns.
It sounds a lot like being human and having dreams. My problem is that I have too many dreams. After grad school I started to realize that I don’t just want to write; I want to make. I want to bake and paint. I want to take up wood-carving and embroidery. I want to make and make and make. Of course creator looks almost as absurd on a resume as writer does, and I am left to make ends meet in less fulfilling ways.
I’ll never shake that. I’ll never be clear of the workweek and the late-night pursuit of something rare and extraordinary. Millions of us must work this way. Millions of us must burn the midnight oil and face fear and failure and risk never becoming the thing that we have always used to define ourselves. This blog is about pushing past those hardships and embracing the part of myself and ourselves that is already rare and extraordinary; the part that wants to take ideas in our minds and bring them to life.
There may not be a name or title for what I am, so I’ll just have to make it, one trick at a time.
