Should you follow your creative dreams, or should you be practical?

Hello, and welcome to the?Kindred Letters -?my newsletter for kindred spirits drawn to quiet, depth, and beauty.?

Over the years, I’ve heard from so many of you, asking one version or another of this question:?Should I follow my creative dreams, or should I be practical and earn the most reliable income I can?

I understand this quandary so deeply, having lived it for the four decades before QUIET was published. Here are my seven best thoughts on how to solve it.

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And now: My seven best thoughts on the Creativity vs. Practicality dilemma.

1) We can all find ways to live creative lives - regardless of the jobs we happen to have. Our culture assumes that the glories of the arts apply only to those who make their living by writing, poetry, paintings, or music – when in fact these professions are only symbols of a deeper orientation – of a turning in the direction of beauty. The inclination to do this is shared by an enormous and wondrous collection of people; maybe by all of humanity itself; it’s probably shared by you.

2) This means that you don’t actually have to be the person?creating?the beauty. According to a study of over 50,000 Norwegians, conducted by Koenraad Cuypers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, immersing oneself in creativity, whether as creator?or as consumer, via concerts, art museums or other media, is associated with greater health and life satisfaction, and lower rates of anxiety and depression.

Another study by Semir Zeki, a University of London neurobiologist, found that the simple act of?viewing?beautiful art increases activity in the pleasure reward centers of the brain. It feels, says Zeki, a lot like falling in love.

“The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them,” observed the artist Mark Rothko.

But let’s say you also really want to *do* creative work. What then?

3) You should still steep yourself in other people’s creations. This will put you in a state of awe, which is the essence of a creative state of mind.

Here’s the musician Nick Cave’s advice to a young artist, from his extraordinary?Red Hand Files:

Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis,?so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being. [Emphasis added.]

4) Realize that it’s enough to just start doing creative work for five, ten, fifteen minutes a day, if that’s all you have time for. It doesn’t have to be your career. It doesn’t have to be the source of success, money, or status.

At the time this picture was taken, I never thought I was going to publish anything big, or, really, anything at all. My goal was to publish something – anything – by the time I was 75. I was inspired by a novelist named Louis Begley, who’d been a lawyer all his life and published his first (highly-acclaimed) novel, when he was FIFTY-EIGHT. (He went on to publish many more, thereafter.)

5) Make it a joyful experience: Writing, or any creative work, does require tons of discipline, perseverance, and concentration. But: it should NOT be unpleasant! It should be the thing you itch to do every day. You can train yourself, in Pavlovian fashion, to feel this way, by making sure that you always work in conditions of pleasure. For me, that means writing with my 3 C’s on hand: candle, coffee, and chocolate. For you, it might be something completely different. But candles and chocolate are an excellent starting place.

6) Yes - you should be practical. Ignore the advice to take a huge risk with your livelihood.

People are forever celebrating the courage of those who chuck A in order to do B, but it’s hard to do good creative work when you’re worried about paying the bills.

My mother used to worry that I was too impractical, warning me that you can’t “live on air.” I never knew where this phrase came from -- until a few weeks ago when I came across the Yiddish term,?luftmensch, which means “one more concerned with airy intellectual pursuits than practical matters like earning an income” and “an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income.”

But you can be a?practical?luftmensch -- and if you want to do great creative work, you really?should?be.?This is because having a financial back-up plan will free your mind.

When I first quit law, I made writing the beloved hobby—but not the income source—around which I centered my life. In the meantime, I found freelance work training people in the negotiation skills I’d painfully acquired as a lawyer. This gave me the chance to do meaningful work, make a living, and still have time for my “hobby.”

This also took the pressure off my writing. And taking the pressure off is a big deal, both for enjoying your life, and for letting your creative energy flow.

(Important note: I didn’t have kids yet, so I had more time to do paying work AND writing. But if you’re in the thick of family life, or taking care of aging parents, or you have an all-consuming job, etc., I come back to point #4:?It’s enough to just start doing your creative work, for five, ten, fifteen minutes a day…and see what happens.

7) Of all the advice in this letter, #4 above is maybe the most important.

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I hope this was helpful – and would love to hear your thoughts and your personal Creativity vs. Practicality dilemmas, in the comments below!

You may also want to check out my books and courses (info below), all of which deal deeply with these questions.

And: you can sign up here for my other Kindred Letters newsletter, which has different content from what you're reading now!

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That's all for today. But I'll be back next week, to discuss:

*How to Handle Your Life Transitions - Especially the Painful Ones*

See you next week!

My warmest,

Susan

Want more like this? You might love my books and courses.

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