Q:
Hiya team,
I have a very queer problem in that I’m afraid having a day job makes me a creative sellout. My college major was creative writing, but my actual creative writing classes were not so useful for a couple of reasons. 1) I was seriously mentally ill and not getting proper treatment through most of college (though thankfully I’m on the right meds and in consistent therapy now) and 2) My professors were pretty snobby about the genres I wanted to write. I learned how to create a Very Serious Short Story in realistic adult fiction (read: work out my personal problems with self-inserts and quippy prose), but not how to write a compelling romance or build an interesting, believable fantasy world. Nothing I made in college felt like me, and when all my mental illness stuff crescendoed after graduation, I lost all interest in writing or anything else.
Now I’m 27. It feels implausible. I work for a tech company and I have a Master’s degree in library and info science. More and more of my life feels permanent instead of temporary and it’s freaking me all the way out.
I’ve been journaling since I was 10, and that’s basically the only writing I’ve been doing for several years. The part of my brain that made up stories when I was a kid feels inaccessible. I want to get back to it, but I’m not sure how. Are there books you’d recommend? How do I stop thinking all my ideas are stupid? How do I even start having ideas again? How do I keep my job from defining me?
Love,
Every Writer Cliche In A Trenchcoat
A:
I can relate to your experience so, so much. I majored in music in college and have dreamed of being a professional musician for most of my life. Pretty much the entirety of my experience with studying music was defined by a racism that told me I was never, ever going to be good enough, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I practiced, no matter how much I destroyed my body pursuing it. And yet, it was always my fault for never working hard enough or smart enough in my practice. And yet, the fact of my failures was proof that I just didn’t have the talent for it. When I was in college, I limited my incredibly diverse interests in music to the Western classical cannon in an attempt to just try to have a place in a world that truly had no place for me. I graduated and got a full-time job doing data analysis in a consulting firm with the plan that this would be a short-term stop so I could save up some money, practice and become a stronger player, and then go get my Masters in Music. None of it panned out. It’s been ten years since I graduated, and I still work full-time doing data analysis, I’m the farthest thing from a musician, and only in the last couple of years have I started writing a little bit, mostly as an emotional outlet that coincided with coming into my queerness.
So I’m going to start at the very beginning of your letter. As a fellow “creative sellout,” I’m asking you to please, please, please stop thinking of yourself (and by proxy, anyone else) in these terms, just because you have a day job and aren’t pursuing your passion for writing as your full-time gig. You’re not alone in viewing the world in that way, and it is such a toxic, toxic culture of “do what you love” (or otherwise, you’re just a sellout) that is entirely about the exploitation of labor. It has never been lost on me that a place like Autostraddle exists on the underpaid labor of several people, compared to the kind of money people make in, say, consulting or investment banking. This is true of every single independent, community-based arts organization I know of and many of the well-established, well-endowed national ones, as well. This is not how it should be. People should not have to sacrifice their lives in order to pursue their passions and do things in service of the communities they love. And this is, by no means, a criticism of Autostraddle because I’m incredibly aware of the fact that Autostraddle pays far, far more than most independent magazines. (And, it actually pays at all! I have seen postings for editorial jobs that are completely volunteer.) But this is exactly what I mean when I say that the exploitation of labor is built into the “do what you love” framework.
The notion of “creative sellout” also denies the reality that there is a substantial privilege involved in “doing what you love” as your full-time gig. To be able to “do what you love” depends on having the financial means to do that, which so many people simply don’t have access to. It also requires a degree of financial security that is about so much more than just how much money you have. So much of the last ten years of my life has involved completely changing my relationship to money because I was raised with an extreme scarcity mindset and in an environment where I was repeatedly told that any money spent on myself was money wasted. It was never, ever going to be possible for me to take the substantial financial risks and debt required to be a full-time musician who didn’t have a safety net to fall back on, even for emotional support, so long as I had that mindset, no matter how much money I made.
Also, let’s not forget about the fact that so many, so so many of the creatives we love and admire had day jobs and were not professional or full-time writers, musicians or artists. This is literally the story of Octavia Butler. Sure, she did become successful at some point and transitioned to being a full-time writer. But can you imagine how many Octavia Butlers there are in the world, quietly writing beautiful and powerful pieces while holding down full-time jobs just so they can write on the side? We may not know their names, but they’re there. And when we do have the rare joy of stumbling on their work we think of them as a “one-off” writer, we struggle to remember them, they don’t get awards and accolades, they don’t lead writer’s retreats. But they exist and their work exists and it has real value.
The notion of “creative sellout” also denies the reality that there is a substantial privilege involved in “doing what you love” as your full-time gig.
In terms of your actual questions, there’s a few things I can suggest to you based on my own experience of working full time and trying to pursue creative endeavours as well. I have struggled a lot with my full-time jobs taking over my life and defining me. Part of what made it possible for me to start doing some of the creative things I love outside of work was to move into a new job that was a step down in terms of responsibilities and fairly easy.
One of the hardest things for me about being creative while holding a full-time job is having the mental energy at the end of a full work day to go and do more activities that require mental and emotional energy and critical thinking. So reducing the intellectual and emotional toll of my full-time job has made it a little easier for me to reserve those resources for the things I actually love doing. I will admit, this was a hard pill for me to swallow, to stop actively pursuing advancement in my full-time profession, and maybe you can relate to that or maybe not. But if you want to make time for things you love outside of your job in tech, then I think you have to deprioritize professional development in your job in tech so that you do actually have time for those other things.
(Although, I’m also a brown woman who does data work for a living so, you know, for me any professional development has always required going way above and beyond and then putting up a serious fight to get a fraction of what I deserve for my work. At some point I had to ask myself whether and to what extent any of that was worth my emotional time and energy, especially since, most of the time, I haven’t even succeeded in getting what I was asking for, let alone what I am due. Your experience with that might be different, I don’t know, but I imagine that, at a minimum, as a queer person in tech you are probably running up against some similar things.)
Another thing I’ve worked on a lot in my current position is being extremely vigilant about creating strong boundaries around work. I really could only do this by starting fresh at a new job because that allowed me to redefine myself as an employee and my relationship to work within the organization I’m in. I do not work outside my work hours. I don’t care what is “on fire,” I will not respond to an email outside of work hours or on the weekend. I do not download my work email or any work chat apps (Slack, Teams, etc.) onto my personal phone. (This is both for boundaries but also privacy. Depending on where you work and the agreement with your employer, if you have a work email or a work chat on your personal phone then your entire phone could be subject to being viewed during an investigation and/or wiped when you leave by your employer.) Before the pandemic, I was extremely wary of giving my coworkers or my boss my personal phone number, and, now that I’ve had to, I don’t read or respond to texts or phone calls from coworkers or my boss outside of my working hours. I occasionally take days or even a week off of work to work on a writing project, and I adamantly refuse to check my work email or respond to messages even though “I’m just at home.” These boundaries are really important in terms of reserving both the emotional and mental resources to do the things I love and actually having the time to do those things, as well.
Both of the above points will go a long way towards keeping your job from defining you, but another thing that I’ve had to actively work on is… not defining myself by my work. It’s so easy, when you meet someone new, to make casual conversation around what you do for work so we are constantly in situations where work is how we are introducing ourselves and, therefore, defining ourselves. For a lot of reasons, I previously would only answer these questions with whatever my full time job was. In the last couple of years, I started being more intentional about how I approached this question about work, and so now when I answer the question, I make it clear in my response that my full time job is really my side gig that pays the bills and I’m more interested in doing other things that will never pay my bills. I also am way more intentional about not making employment a default conversation topic just because it’s an easy one. This shift in how I approach small talk has made it easier for me (and others) to spend time talking about ourselves in terms of the things we care about, which, for some people, is their work but for many it really isn’t. (Someone also once pointed out to me how there’s a classism to making “what do you do for work?” a go-to icebreaker, which I thought was a great point, but that’s a conversation for another day.)
I will admit, this was a hard pill for me to swallow, to stop actively pursuing advancement in my full-time profession, and maybe you can relate to that or maybe not. But if you want to make time for things you love outside of your job in tech, then I think you have to deprioritize professional development in your job in tech so that you do actually have time for those other things.
Getting to your questions around how to re-engage with writing, first, it sounds like your professors in college might still be in your head, based on what you say about about “thinking all my ideas are stupid.” I don’t say that to be critical — this is also something I have really struggled with in my relationship to music and something I continue to work on. Honestly, what’s made the biggest difference in my life is connecting with a teacher who affirms me and the things I love and want to do and the skills I want to develop in the ways my previous teachers and professors in college never did.
So, in your case, this might mean researching and taking a creative writing workshop class in romance or fantasy writing. One of the (very few) silver linings of the pandemic has been that so many things have moved to a virtual format so you have access to a lot of content and resources that you might not otherwise. Look up what writing workshops are available and read reviews from people who have taken those workshops in the past to see what people have had to say. Also ask people in your network if they have recommendations for fiction writing workshops. Someone I know found a poetry workshop she really liked through Instagram. A nonfiction writer friend of mine really recommended the workshops offered by Catapult; she is taking a class with them right now and absolutely loves it. All of this stuff is expensive and may be more money than you want to spend, but the way I’ve taught myself to look at this is to say, “I have this job that I really don’t like because it gives me the financial means to pursue the things I actually love. So I need to put my money where my mouth is and actually, really invest in myself.”
Another thing that has helped me is to create real accountability for myself. It is so impossible for me to consistently engage with my musical pursuits or with writing when I don’t have something concrete and tangible to work towards. This is where working with a teacher has been incredibly helpful because every week I had to show up on Skype and so I personally felt compelled to practice more because I wanted to work on new things in each lesson and not recap the same thing week after week. My friend taking the workshop with Catapult has similarly found it not only a great experience in terms of improving her writing but also incredibly valuable in nudging her to actually see through a project that has been more than two years in the making. Part of the reason I applied to write for Autostraddle two years ago is because I knew that I would never sit down and write if I didn’t have some reason to do it. So, in addition to the writing workshops, another thing for you to consider is to look at different types of publishing opportunities and then commit to writing towards submitting something to at least one of them.
Honestly, what’s made the biggest difference in my life is connecting with a teacher who affirms me and the things I love and want to do and the skills I want to develop in the ways my previous teachers and professors in college never did.
Finally, let’s talk about the age aspect of this. You are 27. I am 32 and also only just reconnecting with the things I love. Arundhati Roy was 35 when The God of Small Things was published and then she took a twenty year break before writing fiction again. Ann Leckie published Ancillary Justice when she was 47. These are just two books I love; I’m sure you can find similar examples among your favorite writers and novels, as well.
Another toxic aspect of our society and culture is how much emphasis we put on age, as if only the people who do something that society deems “remarkable” when they are impossibly young are the ones who bring value to the world. This also takes a serious toll on people’s mental health, as we have seen play out with Osaka Naomi at the French Open and, most recently, Simone Biles at the Olympics. If we’ve learned anything from these two incredible women, it’s that it’s ok to take a break from something when you need to.
So much of the last ten years of my life has also been about rebuilding my relationship with music because, while I have loved it for nearly twenty-five years at this point, it was also something that so many people wielded as a way to diminish my own value and self-worth. Based on the little bit that you described of your experience with creative writing, it sounds like this may have been some work you have needed to do as well. I don’t know where you are in your journey with that (I know for me, undoing that will probably be the journey of my life), but I’d encourage you to reconsider how you think about age and what is temporary and what is permanent, because taking time off from something to take care of yourself is always, always the right move.
And, my all-time favorite Serena Williams is a testament to the fact that you can always return to something no matter how old you are, no matter how many people say that your time is done, no matter whether you “win” or “lose” by whatever metric society is using. It is not too late. It will never be too late.
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
Absolutely loved everything you’ve written here, Himani! I think a lot of us were sold the idea that you have to love what you do, that you have to “follow your passion” when it comes to finding employment. And while I do think it’s possible to do what you love AND get paid for it, I also think that equating “passion” with “work” is a recipe for exploitation.
Also, my other thought LW is that you might be surprised how useful your writing skills are in your day job! I was an English major in college and while I joke that it’s a useless degree, I definitely find that having spent 4 years learning how to translate my thoughts into words and analyzing text helped my ability to write clear emails and project narratives.
Agreed, a recipe for exploitation and also for burning out on the thing you used to love so much. This has happened to a lot of people I know, and I try to keep it in mind when I get into this same loop of self-judgement. I don’t actually believe that turning what you love into a career is always such a great idea.
The older I get, the more I think it’s healthy to say “it’s just a job”! Which is not to say that you should be okay with being miserable at work, but that sometimes a job is just a way to get paid. My friend teaches and she often talks about how her school exploits how much she cares about her students and that equating her job with her identity (ie that “she’s a teacher” vs “she teaches for a living”) has been terrible for her mental health.
My other thought, since I’ve been ruminating on this letter all day, is that having a day job can actually inform your art! Kafka wouldn’t have written The Trial without having been an insurance clerk. William Carlos Williams’s medical practice and poetry went hand in hand. I think it’s actually only a modern phenomenon that people have the ability to support themselves entirely on art, and that’s even debatable if anyone today 100% makes a living through art without financial support from family.
Thanks so much shamblebot! I’m glad my reply resonated with you. Totally agree with Chandra about how making your passion the thing that pays your bills can very quickly make you resentful of the thing you loved. And shamblebot, what you shared about your friend who is a teacher — I’ve definitely heard this from some of my teaching friends as well. Everything here is so true of not only the arts but also nonprofit & social services work.
And yea, you know that’s such a great point that having a day job definitely informs people’s art! As with all experiences, work shapes us and how we view the world and see other people and that will definitely imprint our art, even in genres like fantasy and romance.
Great question and excellent advice!
This in particular is so true: “One of the hardest things for me about being creative while holding a full-time job is having the mental energy at the end of a full work day to go and do more activities that require mental and emotional energy and critical thinking.”
After years of trying and failing, I realised that it would never work doing stuff in the evening after giving my brain away for the day (I too work in tech). If it’s at all an option you could look at ways to reduce your hours at work to give yourself more time back. Plus the strictness about boundaries is essential as Himani says. Ideally get a partner who shouts at you whenever you attempt to work beyond contractual hours.
As for getting back into writing, I would say just read, read, read and read some more. Maybe also connect with readers in the genres you want to write in, but have felt shamed by others in the past about? There’s nothing like other people’s enthusiasm to fire you up and give you a nudge in validating that it’s totally awesome for you to write whatever kind of stories you want. Plus if you can build a circle of reading/writing friends, perhaps writing for them would give you that all-important reason to write?
As a side note, once the LW has resolved these issues, please can you send me all your lesbian romance fantasy stories.
+1 for reducing hours if at all possible.
It’s given me the opportunity to initiate a little weekly flash fiction writing session with my friends, where we encourage each other and have a super low stakes setting for practicing fiction writing.
Thanks Sally! Reducing hours is a great suggestion and definitely one I forgot about. Also, what you and SAM share about having a small network of writers/readers to motivate you and keep you going is so, so important!
Hey Every Writer Cliche In A Trenchcoat! Fanfic can be a great way to re-engage with writing in a low stakes scenario. I’ve published a couple (lesbian fantasy romance!) books but given how little money there is in the publishing world for the kind of content I am creating, I’ve also had to maintain a day job throughout. It can feel really disheartening to want to write and be too caught up in needing to survive. Dabbling in fanfic has helped me immensely each time I’ve felt overwhelmed. There’s less pressure to create characters and worlds, and you can focus on the craft and the joy of it. Plus, folks are generous with kudos and comments and it can really help boost your self esteem so that when you are ready to return to your original fiction, you’ve got more confidence and you’ve been able to reconnect with the fun of it :)
Ooo this is such a good point! Writing fanfic is definitely really great and satisfying, and as you said the fic communities can be so encouraging and supportive!
Himani I always love your insights and writing.
I was just going to add a personal experience – a year out of college I got what seemed like my ideal job. It was a full time creative position in my passion at one of the most well known theatres in the world.
It was awful – the work environment was unsupportive and incredibly stressful. I ended up leaving, having a crisis and working in retail. I felt embarrassed and shitty telling anyone I had done this, and like everyone was judging me for leaving this creative fancy sounding job.
I think capitalism encourages judging everything by power related to society – whether it’s financial wealth or perceived influence. But this is all power that upholds a system built on inequality. Our own inner processes, discoveries and experiences as related to art (or anything else!) are not only inherently valid, but are in fact the fabric of our lives. For me, reframing the notion of value and examining what that is has helped me to develop ongoing new relationships with what I love.
Also going to recommend Lynda Barry’s “What it is” and “Picture this” here as two great books on creativity that focus on process and enjoyment of it over outcome.
“Our own inner processes, discoveries and experiences as related to art (or anything else!) are not only inherently valid, but are in fact the fabric of our lives.”
THIS!!
Thank you Snaelle, very kind of you! <3
Oof, that experience at your first job sounds really awful. And yet, I've heard really similar things as well, where people get their "dream jobs" only to find out they are incredibly exploitative or toxic work environments. It's really upsetting and disheartening, and I'm sorry you had that experience.
What you say about revisiting and reframing the notion of "value" is so, so true, and it's something I both struggle with and continue to work on in my own life. It's hard, but in many ways that work is the only thing that makes it possible for me to keep re-engaging with the things I love.
I'll have to check out What It Is and Picture This for sure!
Yes to all of this! Feel very seen both in the question and the answer.
Thank you for reading! I’m glad it resonated!
Ray Bradbury, in a Paris Review interview, once said that when he was 27 years old, after work he would go to the library and read for hours. And he would sit at his typewriter with a Eudora Welty book next to him and retype her words, just to see how they felt coming out. I’ve never forgotten that image. He worked numerous other jobs while writing. I think there are many ways to access or re-access the creative part of yourself.
Personally, I have active interests in both scientific research and creative writing. I chose to pursue science as a career path, and am in graduate school to become a professional academic researcher, but I intentionally dedicate time and energy to my creative writing – I write every morning before I start working, I read other writing in my genre and keep up with new releases, and I share my work with communities of writers. Sometimes I even draw on my scientific research for inspiration or new topics to write about. Especially with the current state of the academic job market, I fully anticipate that I will probably spend some time in the future in jobs that aren’t that exciting to me, and I feel OK about that. I always have my writing to fall back on as a point of interest and excitement.
What Himani said – I mean, all of it, but particularly the part about boundaries with work – is really important. I do many of the same things – no work email or apps on my phone, no working outside of work hours (which, as a grad student, I set for myself, but I still follow them adamantly), no communicating with colleagues during holidays or vacations, and (for me, this is feasible) checking my email once daily, so that most of my day is dedicated to more focused work.
Some recommendations if you just want to read some books about work and creativity:
– Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price is a great way to start examining how capitalist productivity culture can cause over-identification with work and consequently burnout.
– The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard many people benefit from the “morning pages” technique).
– Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey is a great source of inspiration for crafting a routine around your artistic work.
– Upstream by Mary Oliver includes a gorgeous essay, “Of Power and Time,” about her artistic process.
– The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. A classic for a reason.
This is such incredible, wholesome and relevant advice, I’m blown away. I have recently switched to a less stressful job with less responsibility and less working hours, too, because I want to contribute as little as possible to such capitalistic, toxic thinking as if living equals working. It means less money, but I am more balanced and every Wednesday (my day off besides the weekend), I am so happy and free to do what I really want to. I hope you, dear question writer, find some inspiration and understanding in Himani’s answer. Good luck!
Thanks so much for reading, Joe! I’m glad that my response resonated with you! The work/money trade-off is such a hard one and I know so many people who struggle with that (and so many people for whom that isn’t even an option, in the first place). But I personally have found, like you, that I’d rather make less money and have more of my life to myself.
Argh, darn, I replied to you, Mary… Sorry!
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Mary! What you say about writing in the morning — oof, this is something I need to do more! I feel like when I get up, my brain is the sharpest and so (in the past) when I’ve used that time to free write, it’s been really satisfying! A friend of mine also really loved The Artist’s Way, though I haven’t read it myself. I will definitely have to check out all the books and essays you’re sharing.
Thank YOU for all your brilliant advice and ideas, Himani! When I started writing it was a struggle to know where it fit into my day. I finally hit upon the idea of writing as soon as I woke up, while I enjoy my first cup of tea of the day, and now it feels very strange to go a day without it. The tea makes it feel luxurious instead of like a chore. I think I actually have the opposite experience that you do, where my brain doesn’t feel especially sharp until a few hours after I wake up – but I actually find that my sleepy, foggy, just-woke-up brain is a lot more spontaneous and can come up with more interesting ideas and images than my sharp, analytical “science” brain. But I think depending on the kind of writing you do, either could be good. :)
This is wonderful advice from Himani, and I wanted to share my own related experience. I have a full-time job that I enjoy in the nonprofit sector, but I also have been fortunate enough to publish a novel (and I’m working on a new one). So essentially I have two full-time jobs. Juggling them can be hard (a big yes, yes to the “make boundaries around your day job time” advice), but I’ve put structures in place to make it work, like recurring writing nights with friends and using vacation time for big drafting pushes. My day job lets me do my creative job by providing stability, income, and health insurance. Himani and other commenters have good advice about setting aside writing time and creating a writing support network, which may help you get back into the writing habit. If you set aside a writing night and find you can’t think of something to work on, read instead. Time reading is never wasted. Also, I am still figuring out the perfect creative/life balance, and I’m 38, so it’s an ongoing process. :)
Same!!! Minus the having published a novel, but you know, I’m working on that. I just resonated really really hard with “My day job lets me do my creative job by providing stability, income, and health insurance.” In addition, I am also an immigrant, and my day job literally allows me to stay in this country. Does having to work 35 hours a week mean that I create more slowly than writers for whom writing was literally their full-time job? Probably, but for writing (creatively) to be your full-time job, you kind of have to be producing bestsellers anyway. That or cobbling together a living by freelancing, which seems really unappealing to me for a whole variety of reasons.
Anyway, resources I have personally found very helpful include Jami Attenberg’s newsletter Craft Talk, where she runs #1000wordsofsummer for two weeks every year (you write 1000 words a day for 14 days), and @visyap’s Twitter, where she talks about juggling writing with working in tech, and keeping a writing diary (a suggestion which I have yet to implement, but sounds like it could be useful).
Thanks so much for reading and for sharing the newsletter and other resources! Also that’s such an excellent point about immigration status and employment as well.
Thanks so much for reading and for sharing your experience Katrina! And you’re absolutely right that finding this balance is a constantly ongoing process for everyone!
Book recommendation: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
Thanks so much for sharing this! I will have to check it out!
https://sarajbenincasa.medium.com/real-artists-have-day-jobs-d99ad0026876
I feel like dropping this here might be relevant.
I really love all this advice, I am not an artist even slightly but have had to navigate the ‘do what you love’ advice in a different work context and agree so much about the toxic effects.
Here’s another take on the question of Day Job. I like parts of it but also think that upgrading to a job you genuinely like is often out of reach for many of us, and then the above advice is much more helpful than this. I just wanted to share it for the perspective of, ‘it’s okay if things take time… That’s how time works’.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/ask-polly-should-i-quit-my-day-job-to-write-a-book.html
Oof, thanks for sharing this SAM, such a fantastic read and so much to think about here. The point about “publishing a book won’t solve your problems” is so, so accurate… Not that I’ve published a book, but regardless, the point about fantasizing about how good a big achievement is going to make you feel when, in actuality, that particular high is short lived and, often, more complicated.
I really liked this too! Thanks for sharing!
Oh, I’m glad you both liked it too!!
Thanks so much for reading Hester and for sharing that article! It was really inspirational!
The notion that having a day job would make anyone a creative sellout feels like a remnant from Gen X times when people got mad at bands for letting their songs be used in commercials. Maybe if you’re doing PR for an oil company I can see why you’d feel like a sellout, but having a day job is nothing to be ashamed of. Nowdays I am happy to see activists getting corporate pride money because I know it might enable them pay off some debt or save for a downpayment for a house. I’m not a creative but friends who do theatre, music, and visual arts tell me that the people who never have a side hustle or day job tend to be the ones with generational wealth. Don’t feel ashamed that you didn’t have the same privilege.
Thanks so much for reading. You’re absolutely right; everything you say is really accurate. Everyone I know who works in the arts has had to hustle for it working all sorts of gigs to make ends meet. But I think sometimes, it can also create this pressure of like, “oh well, if I have a solid 9-5 job, that makes me not a real artist, because the real artists are the ones who have more time in the day to dedicate to their art.” Everyone’s process and life looks different, and there’s so many reasons for it.
This is a question I have also been struggling with. I also had massive mental health issues that defined my 20s (and particularly my college years), and have felt disconnected from my creative side for too long. I also work in a medical clinic and have been devoured by pandemic stress for so long that it’s hard to remember that I even exist outside of my day job. I love the advice here, and have recently started setting harder boundaries with my job. I’m trying to commit more time to writing and photography, and will probably be coming back to this bookmarked page quite a bit for support :)
I’m sorry I missed this comment earlier! and I’m very sorry you’ve had such hard experiences. Being in health care during the pandemic has been particularly brutal. I really hope you’re able to take some time for yourself and I know that in time you’ll connect with your writing and photography! Sending lots of love and well wishes your way!
Just wanted to say I love this advice, Himani, and even though my personal situation in many ways is very different, your thoughtful suggestions resonated with things I’m reflecting on now too.
Thanks for reading and I’m glad this resonated with you! Good luck with everything you’re working on!