Maybe stop making financial sense?

Have you considered that your need to make financial sense is keeping you from moving forward in your creative work?

Your creative endeavor is probably not going to make financial sense at first. And for some of us, our creative work might not ever come with a payday.

I’m not sure why we feel that we need to justify how we spend every hour we work, but I suspect it’s just another sneaky excuse to procrastinate our creative pursuits.

Even as I’m writing to you now, an internal war is going on. At the moment, writing these articles isn’t making me any income. For whatever reason, I feel deeply compelled to work on this project, but I know that it’s going to take, at minimum, an hour of my time to write this piece. It’s easy for me to think, I can’t work on this right now because it doesn’t make financial sense! There are several other things I could pursue or work on right now that I know would generate immediate income.

The problem is that we think that orbiting our lives around financial gain helps us make wise decisions, but I suspect this criterion alone results in many poor decisions when choosing work and careers.

Going full-time

For example, we can think that we are only allowed to do creative work if we make it our primary source of income. However, not everyone is suited to the kind of stress that comes with relying on creativity for income.

Going “full-time” tends to require the development of skills beyond your creative work, like marketing and sales. And if you get hired to do creative work, you often lose creative freedoms; you likely won’t be free to create whatever your heart desires.

But, for some of us, the pressures, compromises, and demands of full-time creative work suit our creative spirit and push us forward.

Doing creative work on the side

Our need to make financial sense can also keep us stuck in a reasonable job that we hate. We tell ourselves we are being financially responsible, but the truth is we just aren’t being brave and taking smart risks.

One of the most common ways we kill our creative spirit is by filling our lives with reasonable responsibilities that leave us little to no time for creative projects. We think we will do our creative work on the side, but in reality, we don’t have any time or energy left after a full day of work, family, and social interactions.

Sometimes, one of the smartest and healthiest things we could do is to make that life change that doesn’t make sense on paper.

On the other hand, some of us thrive by working a job that allows us to come home and be creative on the side.

Clouding our judgment

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all path for us creative types. The lifestyle that works for one creative isn’t going to work for another.

The common thread I’m pulling at here is that, instead of sharpening our judgment, worrying over what makes financial sense can cloud it.

I have many creative friends who have given up on their creative pursuits because they couldn’t make it “full-time.” Why aren’t they continuing their creative work on the side?

And I have many creative friends who aren’t doing much of their creative work because they are busy with a full-time job. In truth, they could probably do good creative work if they took a small risk of finding a different job that allowed more room for creative work. And I believe many of them would do well if they were brave enough to make a go at full-time creative work.

The point is that our worries over finances might be hurting us more than they are helping.

I’ve personally found a lot more joy and success in my creative work when I stopped worrying so much about what doing this work will mean for me financially.

It’s my belief that when creatives can get in the zone of doing their best creative work, financial fruits are likely to follow.

The catch is, to be at peace enough to do our best creative work, we need to let go of our anxiety over finances and see that we often use finances as an excuse for not taking the next step toward the thing our creative spirit longs to do.