Writers Write. Or Else.
Get home, sit down, and start writing. That’s all it takes, right?
Well…
I got back from work, showered, and sat down at my computer an hour and a half ago and this line is all I came up with:
The shower is like my reset button. It’s a way to wash away my stress from work and life so I can write.
Yeah — well, at least I’m banging a clean head on the table.
I wanted to write a post about how I’m balancing my passion for storytelling with my current job but I’ve realized I’d be lying. I’m not balancing anything other than my sanity on a tightrope.
I am two months away from receiving my degree in creative writing and I’ve ended up in car sales after receiving a certain phone call that went something like:
Bring! Bring! Medical bills!
I work 60 hours a week and attend class online and, you know what, that’s not so bad. Everyone has 24 hours in a day and I’m willing to do what it takes to make my dreams come true.
I have 168 hours in a week. By sleeping six hours a night I have 126 left. Take out the 60 from work and I have 66 hours a week. By subtracting the little bit of time I give myself to read, eat, exercise, do errands, and wing an exam or homework assignment, I have 30 hours a week left to write. This means that I need to be hyper-aware of how I spend my time to make sure I don’t lose any of it to a wandering mind.
I wake up before my alarm at 6:00 AM and set and reset a timer for 15 minutes to continually keep me thinking about how I am spending my time (I learned that trick from Elon Musk but I’m not quite at his timing of every five minutes). The reason I’m so meticulous is to give myself two blocks of two hours of uninterrupted writing a day. However, I often miss that goal.
Car sales has a way of interjecting itself into my day at any given moment. Even as I was writing this section, I received a phone call from a client starting with, “Excuse me! where are my floor mats?”
After ten minutes of absorbing their passive-aggressive anger and trying to remember who this person even was, I tried to get back into the flow. Ten minutes later I was called by another client.
“Hi, sorry, I finished some things early and I’m on my way to the dealership now. I’m just checking if you’re there?”
I wasn’t supposed to be for another two hours. But if I didn’t go the deal would get split in half. I couldn’t afford that.
“Yup! I’m here! See you soon!”
Just like that, poof, no more writing for the day. I’ll still try and write when I come from work but that time frame has its own complications.
I live with five other people in one house. All of them are seniors in college with their own agendas and fraternity affiliations. In other words, I don’t have any place to work peacefully. I also hardly know when there will be an extra ten people in the house asking me to take shots on a Tuesday.
All things considered, I am still moving forward and upward. But there is still something that makes it feel like I’m climbing facing backwards. And that is the very nature of my work.
Every Friday morning sales meeting I hear a quote from my manager in a voice meant to simulate a motivational YouTube video,
“We’re salesmen! We’re in the business of getting people to make bad decisions!”
I smile and clap with everyone else because that’s what you do. I dance with the devil to survive in the circumstances I placed myself in. And my mind gets sick.
Just about every day I’m surrounded by talk and jokes about “penetrating” and “putting to sleep” customers. Meaning, salesmen smooth-talking their way into marking up a vehicle thousands of dollars in a way that the customer doesn’t notice.
Every day I hear something about making customers pay for their new shoes, clothes, or their kids’ trip to Disney (when it reopens). All I can think about is how customers are likely losing the chance to do those very things for their families.
I feel like I’m taking from people when I make a “good” deal. Then when I come home after making money and try to write about giving strength and inspiration, I cry through it… yeah, I’ll admit that. I end up questioning myself about my own existence and how it could be so hypocritical… Thankfully, Viktor Frankl’s words save me in these moments.
“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.” — Viktor Frankl
So, I take what I’m feeling and release it into my novel and short stories for the sake of one day bettering the lives of many. That is my right action. I know that because I know what it’s like to take incorrect action.
I used to procrastinate and say to others, and myself, that I was focused on money to fuel my creative ambitions. But suddenly, I ended up with nicer cars, clothes, and seats to sip drinks until that money was gone. Of course I could have handled that money more responsibly, but the creative who isn’t being creative inevitably falls prey to the curse of their being.
Show me someone overextending their spending on things they don’t need and I’ll show you someone miserable. As if, subconsciously, they’re trying to destroy everything they’ve built in order to get back to what really matters.
At least that’s how I rationalize it. The curse of the creative mind.
“The worst thing for creative people to do is not be creative because they just whither and die… Creative people are cursed with the necessity of putting their foot into the unknown and making sense of it.” — Jordan Peterson
In my case, I put my foot in the unknown without looking… And I slipped.
I’ve been making sense of it ever since.
I ended up evicted from my penthouse and sleeping in my Mercedes that I was three months behind on payments for. On the coldest night, I asked Death for a dance. We twirled around a bit, but after getting to know each other better, we decided to part ways. We agreed on something at that moment:
It doesn’t matter how little time, energy, and sanity I have left, I will keep writing.
That’s how I’ve come to make sense of everything.
