I always wanted to write for a living, and as often happens in life, things don’t work out exactly the way you want them to. I worked in many domains and lately I finally succeeded in making writing my main occupation.
You know the saying be careful what you wish for?? It turns out writing for a living (as a freelance writer and editor on different projects) amounts to word peddling, I really don’t want to use the stronger term intellectual prostitution, but there I’ve used it.
Writing the ideas of others, rephrasing their skewed logic and syntax, and developing texts of no real relevance to my own view of life is exhausting, and even humiliating at times. I can live with that, it’s a small price to pay to get out of the typical employee lifestyle.
What I find most difficult and hard to digest, is that I have so little time to think!!! A writer is a thinker first and foremost, and not having time to think (just to clarify: what I mean by thinking here is pondering, examining, reading, researching) about so many things I would like to write about is frustrating.
I try to convince myself into thinking that this work induced creatively unproductive state is a needed stage, “I’m storing ideas to cook up on long winter nights, or when paying jobs stop coming”, and I also hope that the paying jobs keep coming!
This is not to say that all the work I take is of no interest to me, or that I don’t get a sense of satisfaction when I finish a job that I really hated and finish it well: I love language as is regardless of what it is really saying: this is my consolation at the moment, until I am able to truly merge language with content that is relevant to the ideas that excite me.
ContraPolitica 