There is more to life than writing
The reality of pursuing creativity
My apologies in advance for the excessive use of ellipses and em dashes . . . I started this post on a whim almost two weeks ago—it was originally a Note, and now it’s a 3,500-word essay. I’ve done my best to make everything coherent, but it’s not perfect. I simply wanted to share some things I’ve learned from writing almost every day for six years (not sure how accurate this is, but I estimate I have, in total, given at least five or six thousand hours to this endeavor!) with anyone who, like me, dreams of being a writer.
I’ve aspired for a long time to be a writer. Nothing more. (And before, my dream was to be a professional soccer player.) Anything I might do on the side—be it Uber, some random gig, or, (God forbid) if I had to, a full-time job—has always been a means to an end, a way to pay the bills until writing eventually gets going.
I’ve been chipping away at this for a while now. Though it’s been about a year since I started my Substack, I’ve been writing for nearly six. You might wonder (as do I), “How could someone work at something for six years and not have made any money from it yet?” But that’s beside the point right now. Because, if anything, it demonstrates pretty clearly that I’m gonna keep going regardless (LOL).
And so, I’ve been forced to wonder recently, all considered, “Is this it? Am I gonna Uber Eats my life away? Just so I can stare at my computer all morning? And once I no longer have to Uber, what am I gonna do with my afternoons?”
You see, the writing life can be very isolating. Though I find my work incredibly fulfilling, I don’t always feel like I’m living a lifestyle that a human being is designed to live.
Especially recently, now recuperated from what was a chaotic Autumn, I find myself more or less alone the vast majority of each day. Every morning, I wake up, shower, skip breakfast (not sure why this detail matters, I just feel the need to include it), head to the cafe—which I am at until 11 or 12, or 1, for at least five days a week, deliver food during lunch to make ends meet, exercise in the afternoon, and deliver again in the evening.
Yes, perhaps when I grow enough, certain opportunities will become available . . . Perhaps one day I’ll be able to travel around and talk to interesting people and hop on podcasts and advise corporations. I don’t know. Perhaps, too, when I start rolling in the big bucks (it’s inevitable), I’ll have a greater means to lead a more invigorating life. You know, like by whimsically traveling to Bali for a month.
Indeed, I must admit that writerly success would relieve me of a lot of pressure right now, considering I’ve recently hit a growth plateau. In addition to the fact that some revenue would free up my afternoons, granting me the ability to chill with people I love and do some things I’ve been wanting to do (instead of driving around with people’s sandwiches), it’d also make me feel a lot more vigorous and optimistic, thereby in part resolving this feeling of mundanity since I don’t currently see myself generating an increasing number of free and paid subscriptions each month . . . since I don’t currently see myself moving forward as much as I’d like.
Even if any of this came to fruition, though, I suspect I’d still need to change something.
As I said, I’m gonna keep writing regardless of how much money I do or don’t generate. I want to be a great writer. Nothing is going to change that. However, as you can probably tell, it’s become rather clear to me recently that, at least for the time being, I cannot rely on writing—on my art, my creativity—for income. But not just because I haven’t yet generated enough money . . .
Part of the reason I started after this writing thing is, yes, because I love it, but also (1) because I want time and financial freedom (the reason I was attracted to delivering food is because it provides the flexibility I crave), and (2) because deep down I want to be that guy . . . I want to be respected for doing something impressive, something hard, something not everyone can do.
Before, being a pro athlete was my key to this status. I realized eventually, however, that even though I loved soccer, I didn’t really love the lifestyle that pro athletes live (which is often just as isolating, and even more stringent) and was pursuing it largely for the label I’d earn. Now my key is being a writer. And I’m realizing I don’t totally love the writing life.
Don’t get me wrong: I do love the writing life. And, in fact, I’d say my intentions with writing are more pure and authentic than they were with sports (I still do love soccer, btw). Nevertheless, just as I did before, I’m feeling it now: my world, my routine, is missing something . . . or, perhaps, has one too many things.
It could merely be the case that I’m being a wuss, that any successful individual must endure mundanity and solitude, and that everything I could ever want is on the other side of a few more years of this pressure and discomfort.
I might, too, feel differently about this all if I had a girlfriend, or children of my own, or a more regular friend group with which to socialize. (The friends thing is complicated right now. I’ve been moving back and forth a lot between two cities, and I’m no longer a part of a soccer team at the moment. I think if I settled in one place, I’d be much more likely to feel like I’ve got that tribe we all need. I’ll share more on this in one of my upcoming posts.) Indeed, I plan, I hope, to be able to be a fully present father, cultivating my family’s very own garden, spending time with my children, and doing whatever else fathers do (drinking beer, cheering on the Fox News commentators, and golfing, I suppose)—a lifestyle that writing from my computer would grant.
Still, there’s more to it; I need to add or subtract something from my routine. Because the core of my problem is not the isolation (that can be resolved), nor the fact that I’m not currently seeing the results I want (that will resolve itself). My problem is the fact that I feel stuck, drowning in, trapped beneath an immense amount of mistakenly self-imposed pressure.
Regardless of my efforts, the reality is that any sort of total financial freedom I might generate via this Substack is at least several years away. Perhaps I’m wrong—perhaps next month I’ll find myself with several hundred new paying subscribers . . . And perhaps there are some things I could do to accelerate this process. It is true, certainly, that I’ve not exactly gone about this whole writing thing the most effective way. If I really went all in, I could likely create some sort of course or digital product and start generating at least a couple hundred or thousand dollars a month by the summer (I may actually do that).
But for the sort of work I prefer to engage in, the sort of work I find most fulfilling (it’s more creative/artistic than money-Twitter style), and based on conversations I’ve had with other writers and the typical timeline for Substack monetization, it’s gonna be, like I said, a little bit longer.
And because I’ve opted to Uber Eats (which pays well, but not well enough for total peace of mind) in my free time to earn money on the side rather than getting a job with set hours that’d provide all the income I needed, I’ve basically commoditized every single second of my life, forcing myself to rush through each day, mostly eradicating the potential for more than an hour of downtime most days (ikr, poor me) for the foreseeable future (hence the isolation), and, most pertinently, putting even more pressure on my writing to succeed so I may dig myself out of, in short, being a broke bum.
I’ve found myself wondering many a time throughout the past several years, “What am I doing all this for? I work, and work, and work, running around like a damn buffoon, but is this what life is all about? What have I to show for all I’ve sacrificed? I’ve forgotten what it is I started working so hard for in the first place! Is writing supposed to be work? And I’m missing out on life! In the name of what?”
It is a fool who puts off what he wants to do now in hopes he can do it later.
In this great big effort of mine to become a “financially independent” writer so I may do what I love, spend more time with friends & family, and, I don’t know, travel whenever I feel like it, I’ve actually boxed myself into a way of life that’s taken me away from these things.
This isn’t to say that success shouldn’t require sacrifices, nor that I’ve not made genuine progress, nor that what I’m experiencing isn’t potentially a natural evolution in anyone’s creative journey, nor even that I no longer aim for so much financial abundance that I could buy my entire family—cousins and all—a gourmet steak dinner without batting an eye, but that I have, in essence, made a fool of myself, losing the mark entirely, by forgetting in practice what it is I’m working so hard for—my why . . . By saying I’m doing this because I love it and want to break free of the 9-5 while at the same time rushing through life as if I’d always rather be elsewhere.
More importantly, though, I say this to recognize and highlight the fact that I’ve overlooked an essential, non-negotiable element of creativity.
There has come to be, looming in the background of my constantly whirring mind, the perpetual knowledge that I could be doing something productive. Each morning, I write as long as I can. But eventually, as the clock ticks closer to lunchtime, I feel my brain starting to chirp: you could be making money right now. Is the work you’re doing worth more than $30 an hour? It’s gonna be at least a few more years before writing makes you money anyway! Shouldn’t you stop lollygagging around and do what you can to start saving? And are you really gonna Uber for the next however many years of your life? Who the hell is gonna want to date an Uber Eats driver?
Not only does this take from my peace of mind in times when I should be recuperating and enjoying life—in other words, when I should be doing the things I’m working so hard for, which would further invigorate my writing—but it weighs on my creative process, taking the fun from and imbuing my work with a pressure that ultimately stifles the playful energy necessary for artistic expression.
In other words, I cannot create my best work, I cannot be the great writer I want to be, if I’m writing in the name of monetization . . . If there is an extrinsic pressure weighing on my creative process.
, posted a Note earlier this month, saying,“How to Write For a Living:
If a young man should wish to write for a living — let him first learn how to properly despise work. Let him idle on the village green, laying like a Buddha below the oaks with a book perpetually in his hand. Others will go and punch their clocks, and at this, he will only bluster his lips and return to his book.
If he stays at it long enough, his reading will train him in the ways of the written word well enough that he may find himself actually writing — and in time, someone may become so enthused with his rantings and scribbles that they will begin pressing coins into his hand, so as to encourage him. Soon, hordes of his readers will buzz around him, slipping dollars into the pockets of his britches and cackling.
This will come in just the nick of time — as his habitual idleness will have left him completely and utterly destitute.
But perhaps this is the most challenging moment — for now, he might be liable to imagine that his writing is his “work.” Having already trained himself to hate the idea of working, and being a practitioner of the ancient art of complete idleness, this will not do. The minute he thinks of his writing as “work,” he is already finished. And if he should find himself gazing into his financial log-books, scheming to increase his streams of income and so forth — whatever charms allowed him to earn anything in the first place will have already evaporated, and will need to be revived somehow . . .”
I’ve noticed over the years that there are generally two approaches to independent writing nowadays . . . The first is the sort of approach most become accustomed to as children—that is, true writing, artistic writing, writing from the heart (Substack does an excellent job enabling this style) . . . The second is the sort of approach aimed at generating revenue—the sort of writing you’re quite likely to see on the internet, the sort whose sole income and claim-to-fame is sometimes teaching other people how to make money writing online—a circular void.
While I wish not to speak down upon those writers whose work aims to earn a full-time income as fast as possible (practically all of them are great people and great writers), I think it is important for new writers to know that there is a difference between these two—between business and art—and that, depending on which path one chooses, there are significantly different mindsets, routines, strategies, and, indeed, lifestyles one must adopt.
As I mentioned, even though I’ve always loved the written word, I started this writing journey in the name of financial freedom. Throughout the years, however, I’ve learned that I far prefer to create work primarily from a place of love and enjoyment, an approach that nourishes my soul much more than my pockets, rather than from the desire to monetize. While I have always hoped and believed writing would make me money, my relationship with the craft has changed the longer I’ve written; that is, it’s increasingly stopped being so much of a means to an end and become an ongoing end, a dance, which I enjoy in itself. Far more than all the superficialities associated with artistic success, I have ever more so sought truth . . . I’ve wanted more and more to do all I could to dig into and illuminate the deepest depths of my psyche.
While this writing, I believe, is at least as valuable as “business” writing, it is harder to monetize simply because, for more reasons than I have the energy to explain right now, it does not lend itself to the transactional sort of here’s your problem and here’s the solution approach that may formally be known as copywriting. The reader, in other words, simply is less likely to fork out cash because, well, for one, “artistic” writers don’t as blatantly ask for money, two, because it takes a lot longer to become so good of an artistic writer that people pay to consume your “work,” and for three, because what benefits the reader is deriving from that writer’s work are far less clear . . . Mostly because art is not a commodity and, therefore, difficult to quantify.
I’ve been told often by many, many people all the different sorts of things I could and should be doing to grow faster and earn more money—many of which include the utilization of AI—or what else I could be doing to monetize my skillset: Get on LinkedIn! Have you ever thought about copywriting? Why don’t you try and sell your writing services to a business? You know, you could like write their about pages or something!
All this “advice” comes from a place of love, so I don’t get so annoyed by it. But, understandably so, aside from the fact that I’m simply not interested in that sort of work, what these people do not understand—partly because I’ve portrayed myself throughout the past six years as a person on a journey to monetize my writing—and what I’ve learned recently (hence my publishing of this post), is that in order to write to the best of my ability, I cannot think about writing in any other way than as a form of play. Any pressure I might feel to achieve a certain output or outcome takes me away from the state through which I must approach my “work.”
Really, I could write an entire book about what I’m attempting to explain here, so forgive me if some things aren’t exactly clear (I’d love to answer any questions in the comments!). But I think I am, in general, getting the point I wish to make across.
While I’d say this choice—that is, between writing as a form of art or as a means of doing business—is far less binary than what may be considered a spectrum, artists especially must understand the difference between trade and craft.
Though it is true I may one day stumble upon riches in my creative journey, as many artists do, it is clear from this deduction I find a more reliable means of income, a trade, in which I exchange value, or money, for a service or product, thereby relieving this pressure I have mistakenly imposed upon my creative self, on my craft.
(And by the way, thank you to everyone who has supported me thus far through paid subscriptions despite the fact that I’ve not been able to regularly provide worthy value in exchange . . . Every penny, as you can see, truly takes an increasing amount of weight off my shoulders, granting me the ability and freedom to create from a deeper place of love.)
So what am I to do?
Well, I’ve mostly got that sorted out already. Without digging too deeply into it, as that exploration would require an entirely different post, I will say that:
(1) At least in this stage of my life, I value time and location freedom more than any other factor that might influence which job or trade I choose. Lucky for me, 21st-century technology makes this incredibly feasible (in other words, I’m getting into remote sales).
(2) I’ve learned throughout this process—and I’ve found this incredibly relieving—that what I do to generate an income does not have to be what I derive a sense of purpose and fulfillment from (in fact, trade and craft can both be fulfilling in their own ways). I think what matters most in one’s financial journey is that whatever they do to make money (it could, indeed, be a combination of trade and craft) is so scalable that it can one day lead to freedom and abundance.
(3) This isn’t so black and white a process; not only does life come in stages that often don’t make sense in the slightest, but there is no one way to go about it all . . . It certainly might be perfectly okay, and even beneficial, for some to stake their income on their “art.” Others, on the other hand, might do best not to think even once about their art as something from which they could ever generate an extrinsic reward. I have just depicted my take on my experiences—you, dear reader, have got to navigate this path on your own. Perhaps, for example, copywriting is exactly what you need! All I hope is that what I’ve written may provide a little more clarity, either because it’s relatable or because you’ve recognized you prefer a different path than what I’ve just articulated.
(4) I may soon start selling my own products. I’m not sure exactly what they’ll be, nor what problem they’ll solve, but they will certainly be separate from my writing—far more of a trade than a craft. A business.
(5) I could one day, if it ever made me so much money that there was a significant margin between my income from writing and my expenses, become a full-time writer without putting pressure on my creativity. That day is just not today.
What are you to do, though? Well, it’s not so simple an answer. What you should not do, my friend, is stop writing. As long as you keep moving forward, as long as you keep chasing your dreams, everything, I promise, will conspire in your favor and work out exactly as it’s supposed to.
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It takes time. All great things do!