Dilemma, feat. Nelly
Should you continue to pursue something as a hobby and on the very outside of your intentions, as a potential dream-job, if you know that getting there is extremely, extremely unlikely?
This question becomes especially potent when you combine it with the fact that finding time to allow for your natural drive to come through is difficult and your enthusiasm is somewhat dampened by the realities of what you are trying to achieve.
To contextualise this, I’m talking here about being a writer and that on a daily basis my brain is filled with imagery from fiction I’ve devised and I have a strong desire to get it out of my head and to share it with the world. I’ve long ago given up the ghost of being a writer of novels or stories, I don’t read enough any more to do that and to be honest, I think I was only acting out on my desire to put words to the images in my mind. Images that are inspired by moving pictures and cinema.
I am very passionate about film and what I love most about cinema are the enduring images, the scenes that stick in your mind, and the awe and spectacle that can be achieved by implication rather than outright manipulation and CG creation (though those things can be pretty fucking cool too when done right). I’ve been tinkering with screenplays and script format for about a year now and have a couple of hobby-horse scripts at various stages of development, I had the time to work on these during a considerable downswing at work where I had a lot of capacity to sneak in hobbies.
Outside of work, other desires and laziness factors creep into eating up my time - plus I’m so busy at work in my new role, and happy doing it too, to sacrifice the work quality to squeeze in hobby time. The reality that my ideas are ultimately Big Budget movies, not small independent cinema that I could perhaps struggle with on the fly and assemble projects with arty friends, and that cracking Hollywood isn’t exactly the easiest challenge.
So, do I give up on pipe-dreams and allow my natural procrastination to stop me from “wasting” my time writing scripts if they are ultimately too big for me to have a probability of converting?
Should I stop worrying, be happy, do what I can when I can and just hope that some day other people appreciate my natural genius?
le sigh
I am very conflicted.
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March 24th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
not that I have a real job or a family or even a real life to take care of, really, but my advice to you is the same as to everyone else: you gotta be in a band
(this advice can be tailored to suit individual needs. just replace “be in a band” with whatever it is you actually WANT to do for a living)
March 24th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
a band of writers? :p
I have to admit I sometimes toy with the idea (of writing full-time) but the truth is I don’t think I have enough books in me to survive. Heck even one is hard enough…
On the other hand, I do plan to join a band when I’m good enough on the sax to actually play in public. There again, going ahead and doing that full-time demands a level of commitment and discipline that I’m not sure I can provide. But I sure as hell can play, and now I finally got started I intend to continue doing that no matter what.
Even if you don’t do it full-time, keep writing. If you like it, do it. If it happens to be published and give you millions, so much the better.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Oh, I think you’ve misread what I was trying to say - I’m trying to weigh up the ultimate frustration of being a creative person who feels that the likelihood of their end product ever being seen or noticed by anyone is extremely minimal, so why bother?
The angle that most people frame their responses around usually takes the form of: “if you like doing it then it’s worth doing” and “if you are genuinely creative you will create regardless”.
Both of these sentiments are equally misguided in my opinion, I’m rather pragmatic in nature but also a fundamental realist - my common sense weighs down any heady dreams of creativity breaking through all boundaries.
I’m not fooling anyone if I try to suggest that getting a big budget script through Hollywood is an easy feat. It’s openly recognised as being one of the toughest nuts to crack in the world. If I am spending all my time and energy devoted to something that people being full-time writers and full-time social networkers can’t manage, why should I do it?
I guess that’s where I’m coming from. My inner procrastinator is seeking an excuse to quit, my creativity prevents me from forgetting on a daily basis as my brain is constantly swamped with imagery and my stories keep percolating in my subconscious, but worse than all these, my real-life routine does not allow for much in the way of writing and I’m trying desperately to motivate myself to MAKE the time but when I do evaluate the problem logically it makes little sense to do that because of all the above.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I haven’t misread you. It’s just that I’m at the point in my life where I feel as though I could take one of two paths — the long, hard, difficult, and risky path of doing what I really want with my life or else relegating that to a hobby and taking the long, boring, suicide-inducing path of the office job. Sure I’m naive but at this moment I refuse to believe that only those with the potential to create masterpieces should be creative for a living. I’ll probably never make anything massively profitable but so long as I can survive I think I’ll be happy (again, naive, but I can’t, in good conscience, give up before I even begin). The people who generally do this stuff for real aren’t bothered by things like common sense or what the guy stuck at a desk for fifty years has to say about it. “Because it’s hard” and “because others have trouble” are not very compelling reasons to base a major decision on.
The fact that you’re trying to justify your inner procrastinator should be a dead giveaway! Can you not start smaller, rather than aiming for Hollywood scripts off the bat?
March 25th, 2009 at 11:55 am
That all depends on what you’re aiming to get out of life of course, David, and that is a HUGE consideration - especially at such a very crucial stage in your life. Like you said originally (and I get your intent now) you don’t have a real job or family at the moment, and whether you want to be able to support a mortgage, family etc, are all big concerns when choosing the vagabond roaming artist lifestyle. Personal fulfillment in one dimension does not necessarily extend to others, financial and emotional are also rather sizable components of life.
At my current stage in life, I’m not unhappy with any of my decisions, I’m financially comfortable, workwise I’m finally doing a desk-job that is not soul-destroying and interest-sapping (in fact, shock-horror, I’m actually enjoying it - something I didn’t think possible for my jaded self), I have a family and mortgage and lifestyle that I’m supporting whilst not hating myself in the process. All’s well that ends well, right?
Well, not exactly. Creativity and writing in particular was always a form of escapism for me from the stuff that I DIDN’T enjoy, the mindless slog of a corporate position, the mind-numbing analytical work I was doing, or whatever. I suffer from a dual problem that: a) I have nothing necessarily to escape from and output is for output’s sake, and b) given that I’m happy and content otherwise, I’d be sacrificing time from those things that I’m quite happy doing to pursue something that may never eventuate.
None of this changes the fact that my head is swirling with ideas, I have plots brewing in my head that are literally 5 years in conception and (to me, anyway) are amazing, I have imagery and scenes that I feel are the kind that stay with you long after the screen goes dark… so I’m fighting against this intrinsic desire to share my creativity and the likelihood that (even if I devoted all the time and energy to penning it) it ever would be shared.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
teaspoon of concrete m8
March 27th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I guess if it was a kind of excape and it’s not needed anymore and eating up from other quality time, I think I understand where you’re going then…
Me, it’s still an escape, like music. What I’m trying is replace an addiction with another, by doing more of that than surfing the web. At least with music I can meet people.
Yeah I’m pathetic like that