Tips for creatives trying to balance paid work with soul work
Like a lot of working writers, I spend a good chunk of my time writing about things I don't particularly care about. Pest control, crypto platforms, debt relief programs, hot dog buns, you name it. If it pays, I'll probably at least try to write it, and most days, I do.
But the writing that actually feeds me? The spiritual essays. The longform explorations of self. The storytelling that lets me really dig into topics I care about. The visual art that sparks something I'm proud to share with others, even if they don't "get it," per se. That’s what I've always had to fight to make time for, often failing miserably.
And if you're anything like me, you might be in a similar boat.
The work I genuinely love doing isn’t always profitable or even productive. It's definitely not urgent by society's definition. But I've realized over the years that it’s what makes me feel like I have a reason for being here. It’s the work that reflects who I actually am, not just what I can do or how I can potentially serve the rest of society.
I think of it as my Eight of Cups work. The cups that may not look as impressive or stable as the ones I’ve walked away from, but that I actually feel excited about drinking from. (Sometimes, there's even sparkling Chardonnay or cold lemonade in there. Yum!)
And lately? I've actually been consistently showing up for that work without shirking my obligations to my clients or ghosting the bills I still need to pay.
Accepting the Reality of Your Energy
A huge turning point for me was accepting that I don’t have infinite energy, especially as I get older. That I’m not going to walk away from a jam-packed day of ghostwriting articles for clients and then bang out a spiritual essay, design a new T-shirt, or rewrite the ending to my latest short story.
That used to frustrate me. But these days, I plan around it.
Instead of trying to force myself into some rigid daily content grind, I finally seem to have learned to build my creative routine around my natural rhythms. For example, I write my best essays and newsletter posts on weekdays when I first get up.
I know I have a much smaller window of usable energy on weeknights, but also that those windows are perfectly suitable for banging out product descriptions or marketing blogs for clients. (There's also no way I'll ghost a client deadline, even if I'm tired, while I definitely might if it's just something I planned on writing for myself.)
