How to Stop Your Passion From Becoming Soul Sucking

August 18, 2022October 4, 2022 / Elliot Chan / Leave a comment

I used to think I had this curse: every hobby I have, I turn it into work. I want to monetize it. I want to make a living doing it. I want to be revered and celebrated. But what I actually want is to be able to do it every day and get progressively better. Understanding the distinction between wanting to make something a job so you can make money is very different than wanting to have time to practice every day.

It may seem that the best way to do something consistently is to make it an obligation or a responsibility, as we would with work. Because we need money, a job forces us to punch in and out even when we don’t want to. Additionally, there’s no better achievement than to make a living — maybe even a fortune — doing what we love. Even if we just make enough to get by there is something to be said about becoming a professional.

The thing is, turning your passion into work is a dangerous transition. Yes, there is this quote, often attributed to Confucious, that goes: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” What tends to happen is that choosing a job you love will make what you love a soul-sucking endeavor, especially when your passion is art and creativity.

If you want to monetize your passion, you risk “selling out” and “chasing the market.” You probably heard these two phrases before. Selling out refers to compromising your integrity or principles in order to make more money. While chasing the market means following trends and copying others’ successes in hopes of reaching a bigger audience yourself.

While both can offer a nice payday and some level of fulfillment, you may potentially lose sight of why you’re pursuing your passion in the first place. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing bad about making money. Money is essential to survival, and while you might not be able to buy happiness, you can buy convenience and comfort. Still selling out or chasing the market is an apt way to turn your passion into a soul-sucking venture.

In a biography about the director, Martin Scorsese, he says, “Do one for them; do one for you. If you can still do projects for yourself, you can keep your soul.”

What Scorsese means is that when you pick your projects you should choose one for money and one for art. That way, you don’t lose sight of what you love and why you’ve gotten into this craft.

As a writer, making a full-time living off of your creative work is challenging. Many writers supplement their earnings by taking on copywriting gigs, teaching jobs, or writing articles on topics they aren’t interested in. But they need to remember not to solely pursue these commercial projects but also to find time to work on their art.

You see this occasionally with actors who sign on to one movie to leverage or finance another. One example is Bill Murray. It was said that Murray only did Ghostbusters so that he could play the lead in the adaptation of The Razor’s Edge, a 1944 novel by W. Somerset Maugham about a WWI pilot. That’s not a movie that crosses your mind when you think of Bill Murray. But it was an amazing performance.

I need money, but I also need to prevent my passion from becoming a soul-sucking endeavor. That’s why I hold this tightly as I move forward. One for them and one for me. This approach is essential in helping me distribute my resources, energy, and time.

When I see a piece take off and become successful, I ask myself if that is something that gave me pleasure. If not, I will only do it once in a while to appease the market and reach new audiences. I acknowledge and appreciate the success, but I don’t sell out to it, and I don’t continue chasing it, because it’s not what I’m only here for.

Take this YouTube channel, for example. My top-performing videos are notebook reviews. I understand their popularity. They serve a purpose. This could easily become a notebook review channel, but that’s not what I want to do all day. I want to write in those notebooks, not just review them. Will my channel be more successful if all I did was review notebooks? Maybe? Maybe I’d be as famous as Ryan Gosling. But that would become a soul-sucking job. Not Ryan Gosling, notebook reviewing. With all that being said, if you want a new notebook, check out my reviews (lol).

There is time to make money, and there is time to make what you want. You must strike the perfect balance to live a fulfilling life and prevent your passion from becoming soul-sucking. When you pursue money, look at the numbers. When you pursue art, numbers don’t matter. Turn your head away and look inwards because it’s not about selling out or what the market wants. It’s about what you want.

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What It’s Like to Be a Writer

August 11, 2022August 9, 2022 / Elliot Chan / Leave a comment

Whether you do it for fun or as a job, writing can be lonely. When I’m writing, I sometimes feels like I’m emotionally trapped on a deserted island. I don’t mind that. I’ve found comfort in being alone. It is only when I look up from my work that I realize I’m not alone at all. Not even close. The world is full of writers… musicians, filmmakers, video game makers, ANIMATORS, and a million other people trying to get the attention of an audience.

It is a dark and beautiful time to be a writer… and that’s why sometimes it’s nice to take a break and let my animation tell the story.

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Finding Time to Write When You Can’t Have Deep Work

August 4, 2022August 4, 2022 / Elliot Chan / Leave a comment

I used to wait for the perfect time to write, those precious days when nothing was scheduled. Nowhere to go. Nobody to bother me. No obligation or responsibility. I imagine being alone in a cabin, free from all the world’s distractions. These precious days are the best days to write. Deep Work [Amazon], as author Cal Newport calls it. However, these precious days are fantasy. They’re imaginary and not real.

Even if I had such a precious day, alone in a cabin, would I really spend the whole day writing? Would I really want to sit at the table for hours, or would I end up walking to the lake or relaxing by the fire?

These precious days aren’t as productive as we think they are. If we await these days to start our project, we’ll be sorely disappointed when we finally get one, because these days aren’t as long as we think. Even if we write all day, it’s not enough to accomplish any big project.

If you only write on these precious days, it’ll take you much longer to complete your work than if you were to do a little bit each and every day, regardless of how precious they are.

Writing a little every day, regardless of the schedule, is the best way to stay consistent, keep the momentum going, and chip away at a writing project. Writing takes time, regardless of what subject, story, or genre you are exploring. If you spend one Saturday — a precious Saturday — each month working on the project, you will only have 12 days to work on it in a year. Let’s say you spend 8 hours that day working on it as if it is a full-days job, that means in a year, you’ll only have spent 96 hours.

Alternatively, if you spend 1 hour every day working on your writing, whether first thing in the morning, during your lunch break, or right before you go to sleep, you will end up with 365 hours a year working on it. Over three times more!

If you want to write, write as much as you can as often as you can. Don’t wait for those precious days, days when you have nothing to do. Don’t quit your job and expect that there will be full days of writing. There won’t. You’d do other things, like worrying about your next paycheque.

*Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash*

Don’t save your creative projects for precious days, because those precious days should be spent with loved ones, relaxing, exploring something new, and creating new memories. As a writer, creating new memories and experiences is as important as writing itself. New memories and experiences are new colors, shapes, textures, and patterns you can add to your writing. Once you reach my age, new memories take effort. It requires you to go out of your comfort zone, and that requires your energy.

I love precious writing days. I love spending a whole day working on my projects. At least, I love the idea of it. But once I get started, after a few hours — 2 or 3 — I’ll get tired and need to rest so I don’t burn out for the rest of the week. I’d like to spend time with my wife and my dog, and maybe even spend some time reading outside.

It’s been ages since I’ve gone to school, and I often romanticize all-nighters. I definitely view my past cramming sessions and work-athons through rose-colored glasses. Only until I sit down and start writing do I realize that I don’t have that stamina anymore, and nostalgia quickly fades. Saving up my productivity for a precious day is an overestimation of my abilities. It’s showing up to a game but never going to practice. It’ll take me an hour to warm up, it’ll take me another hour to get the words flowing, and then by the time I get into the zone, I am ready for a break.

We are humans, and we are creatures of routines. We cannot conserve our energy and release it in one long burst. Like sleeping, we cannot lose sleep for a month and expect to get it all back after one night.

You don’t need to change your life for writing. Don’t quit your job. Don’t buy a cabin by the lake. Don’t cancel all your plans. You can fit your project into your current schedule. A little every day, every once in a while, whenever you can. Just do it as much as possible, and don’t wait for a precious day.

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