Worker

I consider myself a somewhat creative person. Probably not as creative as some might think I am, seeing as I rarely have ideas of my own. Most of the artistic stuff I’ve done over the years has been a copy of something I’ve already seen or heard someone else do. But I guess I do have some level of artistic ability, as the ‘copies’ I have attempted have ranged from “not bad” to “pretty darned accurate”. I remember when I was growing up hardly a day would pass when I wasn’t making some crafty thing, drawing a picture, designing, building, envisioning. I’d wake up on a weekend with an idea burning inside that I would just have to try out.

Occasionally I still get split second glimpses of that creative desire. But only glimpses. Enough to remember what it used to be like. And I know why it’s gone. I’m a worker now.

Working (almost) full time requires a great percentage of my waking hours, a lot of my attention, thoughts and energy. Monday and Tuesday I work. Usually Wednesdays are reserved for studying. Thursday and Friday I work. Weekends are for winding down, or housework, or social occasions, or obligatory activities. Then the cycle starts all over again.

At first, when one of those split second glimpses of creativity would flash into my mind, I would do my utmost to grab a hold of it. I’d summon up any leftover dregs of energy and force myself to focus on one of the many activities I used to love – playing music, drawing, writing, sewing, etc. But as the glimpse faded, so did my motivation. I’d end up hating the project I’d begun, struggling through to the end. Or worse, not finishing it at all.

I’ve come to realise that in order for the creativity of yesteryear to dwell in me again, I need time. I need more than a day, or two days rest from work. By the end of the two weeks of holidays that I had recently, I was motivated. Raring to go. Lots of projects were flying through my mind. Where to start? Nowhere, that’s where. It was time to go back to work. Batteries recharged, I had to spend my renewed energy, concentration and motivation on my job. Going back to work, where bit by bit the life gets sapped out of me again, while I look forward to my next lot of holidays to recover from it.

Is it worth it? I have a lovely place to live, nice possessions, and we never go without. I am sacrificing my time and energy, and that small creative part of me along with it, for financial comfort. For possessions that I never have the time to enjoy. Our house is lovely and sunny, but I’m never home during the day to enjoy it. We have a deck, a hammock and outdoor areas, but lack the leisure time that the enjoyment of these things requires. When I do have a Wednesday off, or a weekend, I spend it staring vacantly into space, zombified by work, trying to get work out of my head so that I can concentrate on something worthwhile. I can’t decide what to focus my precious spare time on. I wander here and there, not really satisfactorily finishing any one thing. All I can think about is how little time I have before I have to go back to work. I no longer have the mental clarity I used to. My mind is a fog. I forget things. I have no concentration span. I don’t care about anything.

I know, boo hoo. Everyone else has the same dilemma. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with my job. I get paid a pretty reasonable wage for doing things that require not much effort on my part. The work isn’t hard. It isn’t strenuous, and it’s not really boring. It’s just constant. It’s like a dripping tap. One drip isn’t really a lot of water, but if you put a bucket under it, then by the end of the day that bucket would hold more than you realise. That’s what it feels like to me – I look at that bucket of water and think, “did all that come out of me? I didn’t realise I had that much water to give. Imagine all the other things I could have used that for”. Instead, I used it explaining people’s accounts to them, and taking their credit card numbers.

I don’t think I can take much more before I completely lose the person I am. But I’m trapped. I can quit work and have nowhere to live and no means to be creative even if I wanted to be. Or I can keep working for another twenty years until the mortgage is paid off, by which time I’ll be fifty and my young adulthood will be behind me.

Some fucking choice.