That Thing They Call Adulthood...

Get a job, they say.

Get a job so you can finally pay your bills and not have that worry on your plate.

Get a job so you can eat normal foods, buy shoes without holes and pay for headshots without a credit card.

Get a job.  

So you get a job.

That job is fine. You meet some fine folks. You try new restaurants. You discover you have more fashion sense than you once thought. You realize that paying full price for a haircut and the occasional manicure does actually make you feel better.

Then one day you’re really tired, you were finally able to wash your underwear at 10pm at night and you’re scrolling Facebook asking what the fuck happened to your creativity.  You can’t find it.  It’s gone.  The most creative thing you’ve done all day was to combine playing fetch with your dog and jogging around the apartment to get a workout in.  

Sometimes at work you say to people that your job is creative.  That it uses the parts of your brain that all your creative pursuits use. Okay. 

You sit down one morning in a conference room all by yourself for some quiet time.  You say, I’m going to write right now.  You open up a Google doc.  The next thing you know you’ve written nothing because you’ve been sitting in front of a blank screen falling asleep with your eyes open because your brain is tired.

You remember when the world seemed a big, vast mountain to climb.  Now it seems small, claustrophobic and full of pollution.

You realize that finding your creativity is now the hardest mountain you climb.  You would do anything to find the creativity again.  You would quit it all and move into your car, if you had one.  You would shower at the gym.  You would do this so you could read a book by the lake at 11am, then write about it, then do some yoga, then write some more, then go to a rehearsal and go home.  And you would be present for all these things in mind and body.  

Instead you go get your underwear out of the washing machine and put it in the dryer.  

You eat an ice cream bar.

You take a shower.

You sleep.

You wake up.

You sleep some more.

And instead of finding the positives, you see only the negatives because your creativity is sleeping and it can’t be bothered to help you see the light this time.