Combatting OTJ Boredom

One problem I hear about from day job/after-hours arts people involves chronic boredom. Some of these people are bored because they've been doing the same work for 10 years or are in the wrong occupation for them.

Others are bored because the work itself is comprised mainly of repetitive tasks that, after a time, lull the worker into a state that makes it hard to focus. I've been there. As a student I once worked for a phone directory company. My job was to proofread entries, comparing two lists to make sure that every single name, address and phone number matched. After a summer of doing this, I felt like my brain was in danger of shrinking to the size of a pea and falling out of my head.

In the 20-plus years since then, I've discovered that all jobs, even the ones I love (including the current one) have rote or monotonous moments. I've experimented on the job, read books by others who do the same and polled friends to come up with a list of ways to deal with this:

• Even if your current job is, for you, just a stepping-stone, it still helps to have goals. Come up with one goal that will make your employer happy ("find a new repeat customer each week" or "increase my keyboarding speed to 70 wpm") and one that will make you happy ("meet someone who could help me publicize my business" or "find a coworker who's also a writer/artist/musician/whatever).
• Decide that work is only one part of the career called Life, and find ways to help your job serve your purpose or passion. Depending on what your job entails, this may be fairly easy or a real stretch. Challenge yourself to find one thing during each workday that will help you move forward in whatever you consider your life's work. It can include locating a resource you can use, finding a sympathetic coworker who'd love to have lunch and talk about goals, or getting a marketing idea from a conversation you overhear while working the floor. The most important thing you can do is to make the decision; everything else follows from that.
  
• Play mind games that help you focus when you're doing something repetitive. At one job I pretended that the job itself was a test - I wouldn't be able to find my dream job until I could perform my current job with complete mindfulness all day long. You can only take this idea so far but it works for awhile.
• Commit to finding a really good friend or creative partner at work. This will make you extend yourself - greet people you'd normally overlook, strike up conversations with strangers and test the waters to see who might be receptive to your ideas.
• As one author advises, "be excellent" to everyone - colleagues, supervisors, customers - as much as humanly possible. I know that if you have a lot of public contact, you're sometimes on the receiving end of jerkish behavior. Focus on the good people. You never know who might lead you to your next valuable contact.
• Keep an ongoing log of accomplishments, projects and new skills you've learned. This will not only help you realize how valuable you are in your current workplace, it will also make it easier to write a resume and verbal pitch to prospective employers if you're job-hunting or in danger of being laid off.
  
• For extra credit, figure out how each of these skills can help you further your off-hours work. If you're a sales associate, you can use your sales skills to pitch a book idea to an agent. If you're an administrative assistant, your organizing abilities will come in handy when your garage band is ready to get bookings.
  

Your time on the job doesn't have to be a matter of just killing time - your job can feed your art and vice versa. If you're interested in exploring this theme further, I've put together a list of my favorite books on Amazon's Listmania. Most of them are in the FVRL collection and those that aren't are available in used paperback form for as little as a penny on Amazon.

"Bad" Work is Better Than None at All

"A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel." John Steinbeck

"A good performance is one where only we (the performers) know where we messed up." Daniel Gauthier, Artistic Director, Cirque du Soliel

When I first tried my hand at writing fiction, I'd try to make the first draft perfect. Now after many years, I consider it a good day when I do any work on my current project. Any progress is good.

If you're down on yourself for not producing as much as you think you should, try this: for a month, keep a log of the amount of time you spend on a project and what you do with it. You might find out that you're accomplishing more than you'd thought. And if you make mistakes, learn from them and move on. Surprisingly, sometimes "mistakes" or mess ups turn out to be better than the original plan.

Making Dreams Real: No Ideal Times

Someone once said, "There's never a perfect time to go to the dentist, buy a house or have kids." The same goes for working towards any dream but it might be especially true if the dream involves an art form. Most people understand if you eventually want to own your own home or have a child. As for the dentist...sometimes it's not negotiable. But a large portion of our "realistic" society still sees art as frivolous, dispensable and maybe even self-indulgent.

That's why some of us find ourselves justifying such dreams in terms of cost-benefit (especially when challenged by someone else), neglecting them when Urgent Business calls or simply telling ourselves, "I'll write that screenplay/start my website/launch my portrait business when things settle down."

The problem is that things won't settle down, at least not permanently. To quote Oprah, "This I know for sure." Life is like a 2-month old kitten - it never stays still for long. Sure, you'll get the car paid off but someday it'll die and you'll need another. Kids grow up and leave home but as many of my Boomer friends are experiencing, aging parents or grandparents needing care may take the kids' place immediately.

If you've been dying to do something creative but have been postponing it because of life "stuff," stop waiting. Conditions will never be just right; you have to create the right conditions yourself. You do this not by first taking care of everything else for once & for all but by making time today. It need only be five minutes at first. In the beginning what counts is that you're doing it at all. The energy builds from there.

Scottish climber W. H. Murray's famous quote ("when you move, providence moves too") reminds us that once we start on a dream, it's as if we're making an announcement to the universe, and often we'll be rewarded with unexpected help. But we have to make the first move.

Making Dreams Real: Other Confidence Boosters

Yesterday I wrote about using a portfolio or creative resume as a way to boost your confidence even if you don't plan to market what you produce or don't feel any urge to earn money by practicing your passion. Today's post summarizes other ways to remind yourself of your own creative abilities and worth:

• Have a brag session with a few friends who also devote themselves to a cause, art form or project during their off hours. Let each participant have 15 minutes during which he can "show and tell" the accomplishments of which he's especially proud. Bring examples for the "show" part. No critiquing here - this is just for appreciation.
  
• Estimate in dollar amounts how much you've saved for an organization, contributed to an effort or made for someone else. This works especially well in circumstances where your volunteer time has enabled something to happen - a fundraiser, a benefit concert, whatever - that would have cost a fortune if hired professionals needed to be called in. The point isn't to focus on the material benefits of your contributions but to remind yourself of the value of your work, paid or not.
• List concrete accomplishments that your work produced, even if it's just something like "my story helped my best friend feel better when she was depressed." Often we can't see all the results of what we do, but whenever you can, take note.
• Finally, record stories of the compliments and praise you've received. It's nice to think that we could all steam ahead without any rewards or affirmation whatsoever but the truth is, when someone else likes our work and tells us so, we feel especially good. Affirmations from others shouldn't turn us into approval junkies but I believe that everyone needs them at some point. If you want, keep a "guest book" or comment page, on line or on paper, that people can sign.

As we give and receive validation of our gifts and skills, we become bolder about offering those gifts to the world.

Build Confidence by Building a Creativity Portfolio

Why bother creating a portfolio or resume of artistic work if you're not planning on marketing or showing it? One good reason is because seeing all your favorite accomplishments together can build your confidence in your abilities - when you see all that work, you realize just how much you've done and what you're capable of.

Portfolios can take several forms. If you're a writer or artist, you probably already keep hard copies of published and unpublished work. Having a digital portfolio as well is crucial if you send out samples regularly but even if you don't, they're fun to assemble. See this article for basic information on starting one.

Audio and video clips (for those in music and theater) are relatively inexpensive and easy to make. Some performers use their YouTube channel as a portfolio.

You can also create a verbal or visual resume of activity in any field even if just to remind yourself how much experience you've actually had. I have one for music experience even though I've never earned a living as a musician.

Someday you might unexpectedly need to send samples of your work. Or you might be in a funk ("Whatever made me think I could paint/write poetry/design sets? I give up!") and need to be persuaded that you haven't wasted all your free time on nothing. When you're down on yourself, you're more likely to make emotionally-laden assumptions and judgments. That's when you need a concrete reminder of the facts.

Downstream: Going with the Current

(Thanks to my friend & artist Chris Eagon for telling me about the whole concept of "downstreaming," and to whoever originated or articulated this idea in the first place.)

A friend introduced me to the to notion of getting into the current and flowing with when she hitched a ride with me to view the sand mandala at the Cascade Park library around Winter Solstice time. She said that she'd decided to simply state a particular wish (some people call this "putting it out there") and see what came up once she'd set her intention. No aggressive search campaigns of the type I always plan, just noticing what happened once she alerted herself to possibilities.

I admit to always having been skeptical about the ability to set things in motion without a lot of heaving and pushing. Maybe it's my Calvinist upbringing, with its "God helps those who help themselves" orientation. However, I've decided to try it out by adopting a more flowing stance towards one effort that has persistently eluded results.

I've been singing in groups since elementary choir in childhood, but a few years ago it occurred to me that it might be fun to get a small group together to sing the sort of material I load onto my MP3 for "car karaoke" - traditional and popular songs such as the pieces by the Linda Ronstadt/Dolly Parton/Emmylou Harris trio. Or maybe a Manhattan Transfer-style quartet with both men and women. I knew that there are zillions of people out there who sing reasonably well and would like to do more than simply belt out Broadway tunes in the shower but don't want to join a big chorus.

One and a half years later, I've tried out two mixed groups I met on Craigslist, neither of whom panned out because members had to move in order to keep jobs. I've posted my own ad but none of the interested women had an evening off at the same time. So I've decided that this will be my Downstream project: if it's meant to happen, I'll meet the right people and if not, something else will turn up.

For me it isn't easy to think this way. I'm too used to making things happen. Maybe you are too. American culture values a proactive attitude. But when you're pushing, straining and proacting the project to death, it might be time to loosen your grip, say "okay, this is what I want but I'm open to something I haven't considered yet" and see what occurs. That something might be better than whatever you've imagined.

Having a Drek Day at Work? Read This.

Probably at some point everyone gets splattered by random splashes of ill will, bursts of bad behavior or drive-by verbal shootings. If you work in a service occupation, a wide umbrella that encompasses waitstaff and sales associates as well as teachers and other certified professionals, you're more likely to be a target of convenience than if you have minimal public contact. When I've been on the receiving end of an adult tantrum, most often it's simply because I happened to be behind the cash register or counter.

It can be discouraging when you're trying to provide good service but a customer chews you out because he's frustrated by a rule you had no hand in making, or because she's having a bad day. For example, most retail workers can't simply say, "Hey, I didn't write the refund policy - take it to the district office!"

And frankly, some customers (very few, fortunately) are one-uppers with any service provider they meet. There's an old-school job hierarchy in our culture that puts service workers on the bottom of the heap even though many such jobs require high-level "people" skills. At one of my former jobs there was a frequent customer I privately named The Queen because she had a condescending manner towards everyone, even the manager. Some people think that putting others down raises their own stock.

In situations where you have to suck it up and respond politely to someone who's behaving like a jerk, it helps to have some tools handy. I polled a few friends and came up with these ideas.

If you've been showered by drek:

• Remind yourself "It's not about me." This might not help much at first but it has a cumulative effect.
  
• Ask your supervisor for a 5-minute time out. Blow off steam.
• Channel Spock (this is my favorite) - put on a bemused expression and say to yourself, "That wasn't logical."
• Perform a sort of mental cleansing ritual - visualize yourself being showered with a gentle spray of clean water that washes away the energetic mud clinging to you or lingering around in the workplace.

To protect yourself from the effects of emotional mudslinging (prevention):

• Adopt a regular philosophical or spiritual practice consistent with your personal beliefs. If nothing else, try practicing breath-awareness meditation: simply spend some time each day sitting in a comfortable position and focusing on your breath. When random thoughts intrude, acknowledge them and get back to focusing on your breath. I've found that when done regularly this helps develop the ability to detach from the emotional heat of the moment and step into "observer consciousness."
• Keep an ongoing current list of your strengths and best skills. Knowing how good you are at what you do can be a surprisingly effective form of insulation.
• "Be excellent" (see book list, below) to everyone you work with. If you have plenty of allies (or at least no enemies) at work, you'll be supported during bad times.
  
• Always always always have a life and friends outside of work. But then, you already knew that or you wouldn't be reading a blog about work and art...
  

Here's a list of my favorite titles that deal with day job/art life topics
Amazon List: Working With What You Have

Jump-Start Resources

If I'm at a dead end or want to soak up inspiration, these are the resources I pick up first.

A Day for Red Dresses

I remember reading a book whose author referred to something she called the Red Dress project or goal. I can't remember either the title or author (my apologies to whoever you are!) but the term stuck with me. A Red Dress is the project you're so excited about that you wake up & go to bed thinking about it, you have to keep a notepad next to your bed because you're generating so many ideas around it, and you lose all sense of time while you're working on it.

I suppose that the opposite of a Red Dress would be a Gray Suit - something you're doing because there's a lot of demand for it or because Writers Market says it's a hot topic to cover (but it doesn't float your boat) or because everyone else thinks you're good at it and should therefore do it for the rest of your life.

I've worked on my share of Gray Suits, and some of them have paid off. But an entire wardrobe of them leaves me feeling uninspired. And what's the point of "having a life" if the life doesn't feel much different than work sometimes does?

After learning about the Red Dress idea, I decided to always have a Red Dress to work on. I've found that having just one project I'm really jazzed about gives me the energy to tackle the Gray Suit jobs as well. One red piece makes a closet full of gray look just a little better.

Today, celebrate Valentine's Day by giving yourself permission to choose a Red Dress if you don't already have one, or to work on yours if you do.

Making Dreams Real: Trusting Your Own Process

Twenty years ago when I lived in another part of the country, I had a friend who taught English to refugees but whose real passion was acting. She'd lived in New York, played roles in off-Broadway theaters and had even toured Europe & the Soviet Union in a production of The Wizard of Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West. When I met her, her acting career had stalled and despite a decent job, she always felt restless. Her other friends and I urged her to audition for parts in community theater just to get on track again.

Instead, she did what many people with university degrees do during an economic downturn: she cycled back into grad school. For someone else, getting a PhD in theater might have been a smart move but my friend didn't enjoy teaching theater nearly as much as she loved doing theater. She amassed more debt than she could handle, couldn't get enough teaching hours to support herself (we lived in college town where it seemed like half the population had MFAs...sort of like PDX, in fact) and still wasn't doing what she loved most.

During hard times it's still tempting to believe that going "back to school" is the solution to both long-term unemployment and creative doldrums. And sometimes, certain types of group learning under the guidance of an experienced teacher can jump start a stuck career, whether it's a day job or after-hours passion. A weekend intensive or workshop can generate enough ideas to last a year, not to mention mutual support and companionship in the creative process.

Be very careful, however, of mistaking credentials for competence, especially in what's often called "creative" fields (I believe all work done well is creative; I'm just using the term here because it's familiar). Of the five women in my writers' group, I'm the only one who has a four-year degree, and I'm not the best writer among us. That honor goes to a member who left community college after her first semester and currently works in retail management.

In fact, a good percentage of my smartest, most articulate friends are not college graduates. After three decades of being in the workplace full-time & being involved in numerous community music and writing projects, I've seen that going to university is like taking vitamins. It's great for those who already have a good foundation - in the case of college, a good foundation includes common sense, critical thinking skills and a strong sense of purpose; with vitamins, the foundation is a good diet. But without the foundation, getting a degree is almost as useless as gulping 20 supplements a day while subsisting on twinkies and Mountain Dew.

We often distrust our own instincts, including gut feelings about what's right for us, where our greatest talents lie and what we can give the world. I believe that this distrust comes from living in a culture where the smallest decision is often relegated to "experts." Students are expected to specialize in something rather than being good generalists who can handle many types of situations and tasks. I suspect most of us are Renaissance people at heart; excessive specialization does all of us a disservice.

If you're stalled, some good group energy might be just what you need. But don't believe for a moment that you need outside certification to validate your own creativity. Find support but continue to trust your own process.

Making Dreams Real - When it's Time to Stop

Occasionally, when a project isn't working out and I feel like I'm running out of ideas, a block sets in. That's when I know it's time to take a break from whatever I'm working on. Sometimes the break lasts a day, other times it's taken a year to get back to it.

Here are some signs that you might benefit from setting the project aside for awhile:

• You develop this irrational feeling that something terrible will happen if you don't finish now - you'll never write another word again, your self-esteem will suffer irreparable damage, etc.
• You're completely out of ideas, even bad ones.
• You dread working on it. It used to be a dream, now it's a chore.
• You feel like running all the pages through the shredder or tossing them on the compost pile.

At this point, stop. Put the project away. Do something else during your free time - take long walks, go to the beach, read fluffy novels or chat with friends. Taking a complete break can actually save you time and grief in the end - you'll know when it's time to return to your work, and you'll do so with a renewed sense of purpose.

Making Dreams Real - The Power of Two (or More)

You're working hard at work, working hard at home and probably volunteering at the kids' school. You have a great idea for a community event, a book or a class, but planning it and putting it all together will take time...of which you don't have much. Furthermore, you've never tried to sell an idea to anyone and don't know how to approach it. Come to think of it, you don't know where to start.

You can try to do it all on your own but it'd be almost impossible. Or you can get a group together.

Groups made up of members who offer each other mutual support go by many different names but a good group will have several qualities:

• The support is reciprocal. Each member gives and receives.
• It's run like a business meeting; participants save any socializing for after business.
  
• The group provides a way for participants to be accountable: if someone says she'll draft a business plan that week, a good group will ask her about it at the next meeting.
• Attendance is fairly consistent. It's hard for this type of group to function well on a drop-in basis.

If this sounds like the kind of support you're looking for, start a word-of-mouth campaign among friends and family to see if anyone among your acquaintances is on the same page. Even having one other person to partner with greatly increases the likelihood that you'll follow up on your plans.

Making Dreams Real: Too Many Rubber Chickens

A friend once remarked to me, "My problem is that I'm juggling too many balls. Or maybe rubber chickens." She and I met while working as staff assistants at an elementary school. We both had full-time jobs, young children, spouses who also worked as school assistants (read: forget about "staying home" or even cutting back to part-time), and were, against all odds, persistently trying to further our far-off dreams. She was an actress in community theater and circus productions (hence the juggling metaphor) before having kids. I'd given up trying to keep a writing & editing business afloat. Both of us acutely felt the absence of something crucial in our lives, something that no amount of work or family satisfaction could replace.

I decided to start writing again even if I couldn't find markets for my material. She decided to start teaching acting classes for neighborhood children in her basement. We agreed to be each others' cheerleaders. Over the course of the year, we encouraged each other to keep at it. Neither of us made enormous strides towards our goals that year but it was the keeping up that counted.

When you have too many rubber chickens in the air, you might have to scale down on personal projects for awhile but it's critical that you don't give them up entirely. Even if you can only write for 20 minutes on Saturday night just before falling into bed, or you can only sing in the car as you drive to work, or you only take one decent photo a week, it's vital to keep your passion alive. Having even a tiny bit of time that you look forward to every week can keep you slogging along through work, bills and obligations. And the stronger the connection to the passion inside you, the more energy you'll have for every other area of life.

Making Dreams Real - "Just Because" is Good Enough

Somewhere along the line, doing something just for the love of it got a bad rap. At writers' conferences and other events, most people I've met assume that we're all trying for a big best-seller so we can quit our jobs. For some participants it's true. For many of us, however, it's not. That doesn't make us any less committed to our writing. This holds true for any activity.

It took me awhile to realize that money isn't my best motivator. For some of my fellow writers it works well. I've met others, however, who become so emotionally invested in achieving the dream of earning a living via writing (or designing or acting) that they freeze up. They're afraid to experiment for fear they'll make a "mistake" and lose potential readers or waste valuable time. Every rejection notice feel like a stab wound. And after awhile, even a job that was reasonably satisfying turns sour.

It seems to me that even if you want to earn a living doing what you love, it's more likely to happen if you hold the dream lightly, not tightly. As much as possible in this economy, find a day job that suits you so you don't feel desperate. And remember that if you're not doing what you do for love, it'll show.

Making Dreams Real - Start Anywhere

When facing the start of a big or complicated project, I used to waste a lot of time dithering over where to begin. I'd make lists of steps, consult friends or procrastinate. This probably came from the superstition that if a venture doesn't have an auspicious beginning, it's doomed.

This superstition (I think a lot of us hold it to some degree) inspired me to make countless new starts, especially in my writing. When I first attempted fiction I rewrote Chapter 1 so many times that I often didn't get around to Chapter 2.

Over the years I figured out that beginnings often have nothing to with how well the finished work turns out. It's the steadiness and quality of day-by-day work that counts. And sometimes it doesn't even make sense to start at the beginning. For example, it works better for me to draft scenes of the major turning points in a story, then write the transitional scenes later.

The next time you feel stuck, try going on to the next step if your project doesn't require that you do certain steps in specific order. If you haven't come up with an inspired beginning, skip it and work on the next part. Eventually it'll all fall into place.