Your Creativity Is Not a Bad Boyfriend

[rynling]

From Amy Poehler's Yes Please, "Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend"

Here's the thing. Your career won't take care of you. It won't call you back or introduce you to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around. It will forget your birthday and wreck your car. Your career will blow you off if you call too much. It's never going to leave its wife. Your career is fucking other people and everyone knows but you.

Your career will never marry you.

Now, before I extend this metaphor, let me make a distinction between career and creativity. Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside of you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, "I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going." That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world.

Comments

[renegadefolkhero]

"Your career will never marry you."

Ugh, tell me about it. It took me 10 years to figure that one out.

[rynling]

It took me about ten years too.

Thankfully I have been cheating on my career this whole time, but I still feel a little weird about my relationship with my work.

I recently read this comic about making it as a professional...

http://spikedrewthis.tumblr.com/post/64136324548/this-is-everything-i-know-a-24-hour-comic-about

...and I can totally get behind the idea of there being a "ten year line" between being absolutely obscure and people in your field starting to maybe know a little bit about who you are and what you do. Still, I would much rather be young and innately famous.