perspective
I was writing an email to my girlfriend earlier this evening, in which I expressed doubt about wanting to be a writer, or what I should do. I’ve noticed a tendency in myself over the last few years, to discard most of the things in my life if I didn’t think I could eventually do it for a living. I’ve actually become frustrated with this approach, even though it has helped me reduce the number of things in my life to a manageable amount. Of course, it does suffer from the singular drawback that a lot of things aren’t much fun any more, and I’m working on a solution to that.
The solution, as I see it, is to maintain a sense of perspective. I feel that I do my best writing when I’m not worried about publishing it - when it’s more conversational, like this. I wrote my story morning pratyer first for me, and I figured if anyone else liked it, great. I seem to have mostly lost that with many of my ideas though, and perhaps I am becoming too practical in my concern - I seem to have forgotten that it’s ok to do things for the sake of enjoyment, and it seems I do very little just for that reason any more.
Which is a shame, because there are few reasons for doing something better than doing it for the pleasure of it. My best work, this work you’re reading right now, isn’t really written for you - it’s written for me, something I’ve just come to realize. That, to me, is what distinguishes a true artist from the marketer - did they do it for themselves for the pleasure of expression and then share it after the fact, or did they do it simply for someone else, for the money? I think it’s high time I started acting like an artist again and less like a marketer.