Hello!
Some big updates have transpired in recent months.
The last time that I wrote here was warmer and perhaps less complicated. This past August, every action felt invincible, inconsequential, and tense with potential. Summer’s warmth kept me company during languid afternoons, and I could stay out late into the heart of the night without a care. Every day’s story was a novel worth writing about, despite lots of long pauses interspersed throughout.
In early October, I started a new job as a copywriter for a cutting-edge agency in a cutting-edge town! Working for the agency has been a change for the better. Days feel shorter as hours spent writing fly by, though I’m sure Daylight Savings Time also contributes to that feeling. I feel productive as I put words to a page each day; copywriting allows me to apply my creativity to a focused, quantifiable outlet.
For example, writing lyrics for songs and albums dreamt up without any realistic deadlines or direction used to be a creative weight. Draft upon draft would pile up in my hard drive, each less satisfying than the last. My brain would constantly be overflowing with half-baked ideas and the crippling doubt that I’d ever flesh them all out. They’re still sitting somewhere, temporarily abandoned, in a shelf of my memory.
With copy, there are new topics to explore all the time… Different clients with different tones of voice… Unique perspectives and experiences to reach people with, and real techniques a wordsmith (or marketer/SEO strategist/content creator) can hone. It all feels very real and quantifiable, because it is. And the weird thing that I like most of all, oddly enough, is that it feels like acting. I can write copy within a defined framework to achieve a specific goal, just as an actor can recite lines from a script to evoke a certain feeling. (The only thing I’m having trouble adjusting to is sitting down so much at my desk, but I try to remedy this with long walks and lots of climbing. Hopefully a standing desk is in the near future.
This new setup (aka my job) means I can really be me whenever I turn to the page to actually create whatever I want. To be honest, this document isn’t wordsmithery in the slightest—it’s mostly just word vomit. It’s everything subconsciously churning in my mind as I’m drafting content for an email campaign or a webpage. No grammatical constraints are holding me back, nor any regard for a product or service that I’m trying to sell, no consideration of any audience or person-reading-this other than the few who may actually know this exists out here.
No one is reading this blog for now. No one cares for now. I’m thrilled… for now.
The more space there is for me to be my pure, unadulterated self, the better. I would rather have this space and creative freedom to be honest than to be running on a wheel chasing a carrot… surviving off the few scraps of validation from an agent, breadcrumbs from a creative “director” or “leader” that I didn’t believe in. You can’t lead creativity in its purest form. You can only hope to God that the person you’re leading is impressionable and driven by material motivators or fitting in with the status quo. Shaping one’s craft or creative output just to be compatible with the current status quo is flaccid decision-making driven by cowardice.
… Not sure how I got here, but long story short I’m still alive, just busy. I’ve been adjusting to working full-time at the agency and learning to live with different type of freedom than before. (Financial freedom? Direction? Some semblance of structure? Haha.) Still figuring out how to juggle everything on my plate (being a great writer, partner, climber, daughter, friend, person), but hoping that I’ll be back here to “vomit” some more soon. Here’s to all the changes that have come with this new season, and the learning curve of balancing it all.