Sundays are my day to flesh out drafts. Since I know that’s my plan, I try to start my day on the write right path… coffee, reading a few essays from my favorite authors, clearing my schedule of any pressing matriarchal duties, checking out what Patti Smith has been up to, taking my laptop to a comfortable space away from my 9-5 dayjob desk so I can get my head in a different creative space.
I did all that today; set up for perfect success, and yet here I am, fixing a lamp.
The broken lamp has been occupying a tiny sliver of space in my mind for months now. It sits on a little side table next to my favorite spot on the couch, and one day when I went to turn on the little thumb dial switch thing that’s built into the cord, the switch just crumbled in my hand. Now when I want to read sitting in my favorite spot I have to use :gasp: the overhead light. Wildly uncomfortable, and highly inconvenient. It’s honestly lead to a lot less reading in my life and that just won’t do.
The fix is an easy one, and to feel like I won’t lose my writing zone vibes for the day I put on an Elizabeth Gilbert Ted Talk in the background. It helps keep me in a creative mindset as I cut, splice, twist and tape the lamp cord back into connectivity.
The lamp now repaired, I put it back on the table, flick it on, and pick up my favorite motivational book to test out a few pages by the soft warm glow of non-overhead light. The book is “Writing Down The Bones” by Natalie Goldberg and I’ve probably read it at least 10 times, each time making new pencil notations in the margins.
Yes, I write in the margins, much to the chagrin of anyone who holds print media sacrosanct. I write in the margins of my books and my life, tucking a session in wherever I can fit it, and jotting down notes of inspiration on whatever app or scrap is handy when it strikes. Life is busy and you take the opportunities to be creative where you find them.
As usual, the book inspires within a few passages, and today’s takeaway is to stop overthinking and just write where you’re at. Write what you are doing. Write what is stuck in your head. What was stuck in my head was that damned broken lamp, but now that it is fixed I have more free space in my mind. More available margins to store creativity in.
Writing about writing… how cliche’ is that? It’s what a million other people do, and then they transition to selling writing about writing, then it’s five easy steps to becoming a better writer, then writing a digital course on monetizing your writing, then a paid masterclass on how to market your writing and how to turn your writing into *content* for the masses in easily digestible nibbles that don’t allow for any nuance or context or introspection. It’s like chopping art up into individual pixels. It’s exhausting.
And yet, I do that every day in my day job. I take the end result of a cluster of wonderful creativity and dissect it to it’s million sell-able particles and parse it out into the world as a product in tasty headlines in hopes that I’ll commission a few ad dollars to keep my wheels spinning, and maybe get someone to listen to an artist I find wildly talented. It’s not my creativity. It’s not my art. Why am I selling it? Why am I just adding to the noise? Everyone needs a muggle job I suppose, and this is one I have crafted task by excruciating task.
Of course this is also why I decided to start writing for funsies on Sundays.
I’m curious to know… how do YOU set yourself up for creative success? Does your day job mirror or conflict with your personal endeavors? Do you struggle with bastardizing your creative skills to keep the lights on? I’m grateful to have built my career the way I have, and I am also grateful to have the skills to fix a lamp so that my career can keep that light on while I write for fun.
Drinking: Whiskey, cranberry, ginger ale and a lime.
Listening To: Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius
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