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Karen Davis's avatar

I can’t tell you how long it took me to stop saying “if i’d stayed in my high profile software consulting job five more years I could’ve retired for life.” Financially it was true. But the reality is, I couldn’t have done that and that wasn’t the life I was meant to live. It’s been 20 years and probably took me 16 of them to realize this.

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Summer Redfox's avatar

Self-identifying weirdo here. I was scolded in a workplace once for having 'too many' creative pursuits. As if I alone was hoarding all the creativity in the room. Apparently I was only allowed to sew and wasn't permitted to speak on any other topic. Maybe they should have put a memo up in the staff kitchen about that.

I beat around the bush when it came to writing my dream subject. Over the years I tried many different ways to parlay that inclination into something on-trend, marketable and of wider interest. Finally, I realised if I wasn't writing it how I saw it, then I may as well not write at all. There had to be something in it for me, you can't go about the craft of writing chasing trends.

I lamented the fact I was born in the wrong century and longed for a gentler time period. Then I found an artist/writer who literally stitches his own books together and published them start to finish. Right down to securing them into a cover. Okay, that's an idea then. He's very successful at it.

Most of the limits on us creatives are self imposed. I'm learning to take the bliinders off and see more possibilities than just the ones presented by mainstream.

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