Posts Tagged ‘writing’
There’s often a disconnect between what we spend our “paid” time doing and what we spend our “free” time doing. It’s this disconnect that makes so many people despise their jobs or rejoice for the weekends — our professions are not the same as our passions.
I learned something about myself last night. Rather, I remembered something about myself. When I was in high school, I always had issues typing essays. I’d write draft after draft and take home C after C on my papers. It was frustrating, but I managed to keep my grades up through endless re-writes and the unearned goodwill of several teachers. It wasn’t until my junior year when I discovered a very interesting thing.
Many of us struggle to find a sort of balance between our work and our lives. We bring work home on the weekends, make personal calls from the office, or otherwise blur the lines between things that belong solely in the home or in the office. It’s important to keep these things as separate as possible, though, and what we should be doing is fighting for that kind of distinction.
The creative muscle is like any real muscle, it can be trained, it can grow, but most importantly it can whither neglect. It is vital to our careers as marketers to nurture this muscle from time to time, whether by taking a short vacation, doing pro-bono work for an interesting client, or by engaging in other extra-curricular activities. One activity that is a good workout for anyone in a writing-intensive industry is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.