------------------------------------------------------------ Writing and Work, (circumlunar), 07/20/2018 ------------------------------------------------------------ User jynx recently posted on "life segmentation"[1], prompting several replies in gopher space. I really enjoyed jynx's advice: "So, if you haven't done so, divorce your purpose from your employment. Make your employment pay your bills, not define you. Do not let all of your time be swallowed by your vocation. You cannot go back to see what you missed, and money does not replace the time you lost." Really, this is important. In my adult life, my hobby became my career, and my joy in the thing I was doing evaporated. Maybe it's a natural process, where our work provides value to others but takes something from us, and our recreation must adapt in order to continue being a renewal. Maybe the pleasure I had in the hobby was bound to subside either way. The point is, we need work, and we need recreation. The minute you spend all your time recreating, you're not renewing anything. I'm certain some great philosopher has already addressed this problem, though I'm not well read enough to know who they were. Right now, I'm poised to restart the cycle of turning a hobby into a vocation. I enjoy writing, and some part of me says that I'd like to write to provide. I have no delusions of becoming a best-selling author overnight, or even at all. I'm fully aware of the plight of the starving artist[2], and yet I'm not even inclined to identify as an artist. I'm just a guy that likes to write and wants to try out a new job. One of the responders to jynx's post was user zlg[3], who shared an article entitled "The Sex & Cash Theory"[4]. Loosely stated, the theory is that creative folks can have one of two types of jobs: a bill-paying "cash" job, or a creative and "sexy" job. The article was apparently drawing from a book, but I didn't look further. Most jarring from the article was this bit: "It’s the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way- who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy job and moving straight on over to best-selling author. Well, they never make it." My issue with this is the false dichotomy of a cloven life vs. wanting to be an instant success in an artistic field. Reason and experience tell me that there are many other paradigms that one could pursue. I think one issue that the article doesn't cover is what happens to "sexy" pursuits when they're all you pursue, and what happens to "cash" pursuits when they're all you pursue. I really need to look into that more. Life has been chaotic, and I feel like this post reflects that to a degree. Hopefully I can calm down and bit and get some writing projects going that aren't chaotic; that, or find a market for chaotic works. [1] gopher://gopher.club:70/0/users/jynx/phlog/typezero/20180709.post [2] gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Starving artist [3] gopher://zlg.space:70/0/phlog/2018-07-12_0036.txt [4] https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2004/03/25/the-sex-cash-theory/