Being Creative vs Being Paid

// The Revision

This week is half term but for the last few weeks, I've been subjected to Layla (our eldest daughter) revising for GCSE's - the great 'school leavers' last hurrah.. The kitchen table has disappeared under a layer of revision cards, highlighters and printed sheets and there's a low level of additional stress in the house that I recognise - not from my own revision, I should say, because I didn't really do much of that - but from watching it happen and knowing what's at stake for her - especially in her own head.

Layla cares about the results, like she really cares. Which is both admirable and slightly foreign to me because if I'm honest, I didn't.

Not really. At all.

I had the knowledge and the 'skills' - that bit was fine - but the effort required to convert that knowledge into exam performance just wasn't something I was particularly motivated to apply. Almost every single school report said that I was 'talented' but I needed to apply myself more to hit the levels I am 'capable of'.

I mean, exams are just so BORING and I'd like to tell you there was a deeper reason for that mindset, some philosophical stance on the education system or a grand plan forming in the background, but no - I just didn't try very hard at my exams because I had already proven to myself that I was capable so why did I need to be judged?

The interesting bit about all of this is that Layla knows that about me because we've talked about it and rather than it being a cautionary tale in the way you'd expect, it's become this slightly odd thread between us - the understanding that the grades don't define the ceiling, that the results aren't the whole story.

Which is easy for me to say, of course becauseI got away with it but watching her revise has started something uncomfortable in me - a question I've been turning over for a few weeks now and can't quite put down.

// The Protection

Given that I've just left Yammayap and I'm about to embark on a new (really exciting) role, I've noticed something about the way I'm thinking about my work lately because I feel like I'm protecting it.

Let me explain - I'm conscious now of my available time and how much I can actually take on so I'm becoming acutely aware of two threads in my professional life, one which is the 'main job' and the other where I have a limited 'creative' budget which means I need to have an ever increasing protective mindset - not in an obvious way - not in a "I won't try that in case it fails" way - but in a more 'aware' way.

I'm starting to make decisions that protect the creative path for the future - the newsletter, the videos, Let Them Create - the stuff that feels like mine - at the expense of leaning harder into the stuff that pays the bills - the day to day job, which I am also becoming more protective of.

There's a version of this that sounds healthy - knowing what you want and protecting it, trimming the fat, agency over choices and I've written about all of that. I believe in all of that but there's another version which is a little less flattering - where protecting the creative work is actually just fear wearing a nicer coat.

Because where "I'm being intentional about my path" is covering for "I'm scared that if I lean too hard into the creative stuff, I'll lose the other thing."

I genuinely don't know which one it is yet but I do know, I've been gifted a wonderful opportunity in my new role which means our family will be secure for the future - there is a path available where success gives our family everything we could possible want - which I don't want to fuck up.

// The Results of the Exams

Here's where my kids come back in - Layla is stressed about the grades because the grades feel like the verdict - the thing that determines what comes next and I'm watching her and I want to say "it's not that simple" because I'm living proof that it isn't but I also can't pretend that the grades don't matter because they do - not as a ceiling, but as a door.

They open certain things and close others and you don't always get to know in advance which ones and I think that's the same tension I'm sitting in - if you're at a crossroads and you can see success in both directions, what path do you take?

The day job - the one which is super exciting and I'm privileged to do - the stuff that pays, the stuff I'm good at, the work that builds the foundation - that's the grades. It's not the whole story but it's the door because it opens things.

It funds all my creative endeavours and it creates the stability inside which the creative stuff can actually breathe and I've been quietly, almost without noticing, revising less. (And at this point, the analogy is being stretched in my mind but I mean that I'm reigning in the opportunities outside of the day job, being less creative - that's the revision bit in the analogy)

I don't want to be doing just enough to get by and I don't want to be telling myself the knowledge is there so the effort doesn't need to be - for once, I need to act like my kids and put the effort in, do what's needed and trim the fat in other areas..

Which is - and I say this with full self awareness - exactly what I didn't do the first time around.

// The Final Bit

I don't have a clean way to wrap this up because I don't want to land on "follow your passion" because I've seen enough people bankrupt their happiness doing that - and I'm not going to land on "the work that pays is the work that matters" because I've been the most corporate version of myself and I know how that feels from the inside - it's like having a caged beast that doesn't feel right.

What I do know is that the protection instinct - the one that says guard the creative stuff, keep it safe, don't let the commercial weight crush it - that instinct isn't wrong but it needs watching.

Because somewhere between protecting the thing you love and neglecting the thing that supports it, there's a line and I think I've been drifting toward it without fully admitting it.

My kids will sit their exams, this summer Layla will get her results and whatever comes back, the work they put in between now and then is the only bit they actually control - I'm trying to remember that the same is true for me.

Put the effort in. Do the revision. Don't just rely on the knowledge being there.

The results - whatever form they take - tend to follow.