Zen and the Art of Making a Living...

[firecat]

...didn't intend for "making beautiful / frivolous things" to be excluded from people's lists of what there needs to be more of in the world. I excluded it. I do enjoy a lot what I have chosen to do, but there is some other stuff I need to choose to do. Another part of the knot is that the kinds of caretaking I do come easy to me, and there's a part of my soul that is longing for more of a challenge, but I'm also terrified of it.

Comments

[xp85goblin.livejournal.com]

In many ways a creative project is like any other kind of work. Planning is involved, plus lots of elbow grease, not to mention budgets and schedules. Really, it is a lot less glamorous and unattainable than you make it out to be. It has its satisfactions, but good work habits are just as important in making Beautiful Things as in turning out widgets at Wally's Widget Works.

[firecat]

Yes. But there is a difference, as we both know, between turning out Wally's widgets and turning out our own widgets.

[xp85goblin.livejournal.com]

Well, the main difference is that you have to figure out what widget to make and you don't have Wally standing there poking you along. That and when you get finished, unless you are the kind who is never satisfied with what you do, there is a certain pride involved that making widgets for Wally doesnt provide.

[firecat]

Plus, you are the one driving the making of the widget. You aren't making the widget for someone else. (One of my problems -- well, I perceive it as a problem -- is that everything I do except sleep and read catalogs is "for" other people. I feel like I'm neglecting myself.

[xp85goblin.livejournal.com]

That is very different from how I do things, I tend to see the world in terms of goals, costs, risks, benifits and resources. Sometimes the goals are for others, sometimes they are for me, and while my goals may vary in priority and nobility, the procedure for implementing them is pretty much the same. Of course, my applying the same goal directed mentality to my love life or to my ethical decision making shocks people sometimes. But then I never felt I needed other people to validate my goals. My goals arent relative to anyone else and are pretty much axiomatic in the reasoning process. People's objections to a goal represent simply an aditional practical obsticle, not an invalidation of that goal.

[firecat]

Yep. There are benefits to not being too people oriented.

[xp85goblin.livejournal.com]

I don't mind people (at least the times when they aren't being jerks). But I just figured that relying on them for validation was a sure way to feel miserable a lot.

[firecat]

It is.

But it's not so much that I rely on other people for validation, as that they take up all my time.

[xp85goblin.livejournal.com]

That would be the single biggest reason why I would think twice about actively going Poly. Relationships are time suckers and there are other things I am interested in besides exotic sex and an active social life.

[firecat]

I was like this before I was actively poly.

I will figure out how to have time for myself and time to be with people I really want to be with.

[xp85goblin.livejournal.com]

It requires something like a planner, a good sense of priorities, and most of all the discipline to say "No" occasionally. It also takes the social skills not to perminantly offend the person you said "No" to, but that probably isnt an issue with you. Your social skills seem just fine.