The Problem with “things”

Once upon a time when I was a totally hopeless novelist, I could spend hours, days, months, happily sitting at my computer and writing. There wasn’t anything else to do. There was no way to pretend like I was working on my career if I wasn’t actually typing words in a manuscript. Not so today.

Today I have this weird side career as a spoken word poet and activist. I love both of these occupations and doing them makes my life way less sad and more purposeful. Let’s face it, no one ever conquered the world sitting at their computer and typing. Especially if that laptop wasn’t hooked into the internet. It wasn’t. But, finding, booking, networking for performance opportunities, planning events, inspiring and directing new volunteers, writing a blog, all involve an awful lot of work that is not actually writing. I send e-mails, I send facebook messages, I blog, I compress my latest video, I check to see how many views my favorite poem has gotten, I look at charts that measure the trajectory of my website traffic, I design new business cards. I do “things.”

The problem with the things is that they feel like work. In some sense, they are work. They are in some way contributing to my sphere of influence, increasing opportunities, doing good. But despite this, they are not my life work. They are not getting me closer to finishing my book, going on my book tour and setting the world on fire. I’ll get to setting the world on fire right after I finish this e-mail, I promise.

There is a certain amount of time waste that goes into any vocation, and arguably even more that goes into creative vocations. I accept this. But usually if I spend a whole day not getting any words written, it feels like death on a stick. Unfortunately, now that I have so many “things,” I can torch an entire work week without writing any words and hardly notice. This concerns me.

I’ve heard this same complaint from other artists. How much time do you spend on promotion as opposed to making work? How much time networking? How much time fundraising? I’ve even heard arguments about how much time to spend editing as opposed to creating new work. Oy.

I believe the overall point here is, I should really be working on my second draft and not spending time on this silly blog. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed it.

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