I love drawing just because. I wish I didn’t feel guilty about it sometimes. You know what I mean. A little guy comes into my head telling me, “Hey dude, aren’t you an adult? Shouldn’t you be spending this time leveling up your knowledge of AI or project management, or blah, blah, blah, (something that makes you money) blah blah?”
Nope, I’m going to finish this banana man drawing instead, thank you very much.
Last weekend I flipped through a copy of Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon and found this passage that agreed with me (and which made me feel very smug).
“If you have two or three real passions, don’t feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Don’t discard. Keep all your passions in your life. This is something I learned from the playwright Steven Tomlinson.
Tomlinson suggests that if you love different things, you just keep spending time with them. “Let them talk to each other. Something will begin to happen.”
The thing is, you can cut off a couple passions and only focus on one, but after a while, you’ll start to feel phantom limb pain.”
In other words, the side projects/passions (like my drawing) actually feed the work passions and vice versa.
Keep doing them all, and don’t feel guilty about it.
P.S. Another one of my favorite passages from this same book is about not worrying too much about consistency.
Comments welcome!