Today’s episode is a homage to a quote I stumbled upon when reading Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Errand. It goes like this:
“And so I passed that day in pleasure. Which is to say, in the sort of work I wanted to do, rather than the work I thought I ought to be doing.”
Doing the work I wanted to do rather than what I thought I ought to be doing.
This is a wonderful sentence and it struck me when I read it.
As creatives, we are often stuck in a cycle of doing work to pay the bills and doing work that lights us up.
Sometimes those two things align and sometimes they don’t.
Ultimately the goal for all of us is to pay the bills doing work we want to do rather than what we think we should be doing.
I, for one, find it hard to distinguish sometimes.
Let’s take the start of my career for one.
Writing music has been a hobby of mine since my early teens. However, when I started to get paid for writing music, the lines blurred. When I wrote music I no longer knew if I was doing it for fun or to get money.
This stressed me out. Yes, I appreciate it is a nice problem to have but it does beg the question, how do you create the time and space to create for yourself when you are creating for others most of the time?
So today, I wanted to create some acoustic lofi music just because I wanted to…although I then turned it into a podcast sooooo still turning it into work 😂 D’oh!
Thanks for reading The Diary of a Music Maker!
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