Thoughts on Creative Living

Here’s the thing. I want to get back to that place in my creative life when I created because it was fun and not because I was trying to be somebody.

I want to write again because it gives me solace, allows me to express myself in ways I could not otherwise convey, and because I simply enjoy creating and storytelling.

When I was a child, I didn’t ask myself how profitable something would be before I put it down on paper. When I take a picture of something, I don’t think about how I can profit from it before I put it out into the world. I create it because I enjoy the process; I share it because it’s made me happy.

I’m so tired of thinking in terms of monetization. I understand that artists also need to be business-minded, but what happens when that keeps you from creating? What happens when creativity starts to feel less valuable because you’re not sure if it’s profitable?

I’ve been published before, and that honestly didn’t make me feel like any more or less of a writer in the end. Social media communities have shared my photography on multiple occasions, even though I just use my iPhone. I used to hate when people said writing was just a hobby. It always felt like they were devaluing what it meant to me, but I allowed their interpretation to cloud my understanding of how these creative pursuits informed my life.

It really doesn’t matter what other people think of you or your creative pursuits; it only matters what it means to you. I have a day job. I can make money and support myself this way. I don’t feel the same urgency to be a professional artist (though, it’s nice to daydream about) as I did during my post-college years. Maybe these things are just hobbies. That doesn’t make them any less important. In fact, I’d argue that makes them more important—vital, even—to our daily survival.

One of my favorite poets is a man named Dana Gioia, who also received his MBA from Stanford and worked as a corporate businessman. Some artists would say they could not create if they didn’t have a day job to balance out their creative life. I’ve actually resisted this idea myself in the past, thinking that the holy grail of creative living and working as an artist was to be able to do it full-time. But then I think about how accomplished I feel when I do get in some writing on a workday. It may be a half hour in the evening and only a few hundred words, but it’s something, it’s progress. At the end of the day, I have to ask myself if I really need it to be more than that.