Tag Archives: Work vs. Muse

Nurture vs. A Good Slap in the Face

Sometimes I sit on my sofa watching X-Files reruns with a fist-full of chocolate just because I feel like it…  Lately, I’ve felt like it a lot more.

So much so in fact that I’m thinking I might just  need a good a slap in the face to get my day-dreaming butt back to the keys, because although that Fox Mulder makes me go “mmm,” indulging the inner kicker and screamer can only lead to wider hips and a few cavities.

(sigh)

I don’t know if it’s all the “working” that’s got me so lazy lately, or what, but I get home from my 9-5er and all I want to do is vegitate.  I don’t want to look at my computer, I don’t want to think, I just want to be whisked away by alien-chasing men in well tailored pants… or sit in the back yard with a glass of red wine and look for my own alien adventures in the sky above.

I think that this is why I treasured my unemployment, even as it was landing me on my parents couch; I knew the time was precious.  I knew it wouldn’t always be so easy to spend days, Weeks, MONTHS, writing…

I’ve spoken to several friends lately who find themselves at the mercy of jobless woes, but it’s the artists who seem the least fazed; as though having long ago made peace with the fact lthat they were dedicating themselves to a dance with uncertainty by pursuing their passions.  Eating bologna and corn flakes for a week stinks, but if you’ve done it before the economic crisis/disaster/total and complete meltdown, it’s not like you’re slamming your head against your law degree in abject and stunned anxiety, wondering “How in the world did this happen to me?!”

Oh no, the artist knows unemployment and financial uncertainty are always just outside her door.

I knew it was a risk the moment I signed on to work with a burgeoning Theater Company… and I knew I wasn’t doing myself the most favors by pursuing a string of part-time, temporary positions after that…

But I will always choose art over practicality.  (sigh) It’s just how this cricket jumps.

And it’s why she’s so damned tired now that she has a “real” job to tend to.

In any case, it’s interesting to see how this will inform my writing.  I just wrapped up a play about an unemeployed, heartsick woman ravaged by too much news and the oil spill, and I threw in a census worker (temporary time job # 129), so who knows what will come of this present experience…

If I can just manage to turn off that handsome David Duchovny…