⚖️ TREE 391: You can make art AND have a job

This week’s guest author is Cali Bird. When I stumbled across her work a few weeks ago I knew I needed to share her with you. I read and listen to a ton of stuff about being creative. Cali’s insight on how to live a creative life in the real world of bills and trying earn enough money to feed the cat and the kids is the clearest and most helpful. This is going to be a good TREE week. Please take five minutes sometime today and read the interview she links to. That guy is next level when it comes to optimising his creativity time.

Grow slowly
Jeff

One.

Do you have a dream to write a book, compose music, play the piano or draw cartoons (like all the wonderful ones that Jeff produces)? Do you think that you have to give up your job to be a writer or artist?

Or are you waiting until you retire to even consider these creative options?

The good news is that you can start (or revive) a creative pursuit alongside your other responsibilities right now.

Let’s get real – the world is an expensive place to live. Fuel, utilities, food – all going up. It’s good to have a job and take care of your responsibilities.

You don’t need lots of time to be creative. It’s possible to write 500 words in as little as twenty minutes. Let’s say you managed that four times a week. In nine months you’d have the first draft of a novel.

I once interviewed an accountant who used to take two minutes between client meetings and write a couplet of a song lyric. He kept an old guitar in his car and got the chords down in his lunch break. In a few stolen minutes, he created something that didn’t exist at the beginning of the day. You can read the full interview here.

Tomorrow, I’ll give you my top time management tips so that you can squeeze a few creative minutes into your day, no matter how busy you are.

Two.

Good news × 2: I’ll be posting my illustrations again next week. This week, the marvellous Teresa Roberts has stepped into the gap with four original illustrations inspired by Cali’s words. –JG

Here we have the very moment that Susan decided that eating your cake is having it too.

Three.

Cali chose this for today. You’ve heard it a million times before, but I’m sitting on the lawn under my cherry tree on the warmest day of the year so far and thinking it’s the perfect choice. —JG