I have been TAGGED! Lillian Csernica invited me to participate in the Love/Hate Blog Challenge. She wrote about what she loves/hates about being creative here. The challenge is to write a list of top ten things you love/hate about a thing. I HERETOFORE ISSUE THE CHALLENGE TO Emma Leigh and Devon Miller!

Love:

1) Even if I have a slow writing day, I can at least feel like I have done something productive.

2) Paychecks are good. They pay bills.

3) The day job provides structure, which forces focus and sticking to a writing schedule which, in my case, usually helps with productivity.

4) Retail enables you to witness all kinds of mundane and bizarre behavior and forces you into conversations with folks, both lovely and awful, you might not speak to otherwise. This can be great for the writer-brain.

5) You learn weird stuff. Writer-brain loves learning weird stuff.

6) Unlike the act of writing, in the day job you are not alone in terms of making stuff happen.

7) That feeling when you finally get to clock out for the day and you can’t wait to get back to the writing.

8) As an introverted writer-person, there is a very real possibility that without someplace I am obligated to be I would isolate a little too much. Human beings are wired for contact with other human beings no matter our level of introversion. It helps the brain stay relatively healthy.

9)  When you work for someone else there’s a certain amount of control about what you are going to do with your day that you, necessarily, give up. Sometimes (not often) that can be a relief.

10) It forces much needed distance between me and the work. When I come back to the writing project, sometimes I find that the forced distance was exactly what I needed to move forward.

 

Hate:

1) OMG! I’M HAVING ALL OF THE BEST IDEAS RIGHT NOW BUT ALL I CAN ACTUALLY DO IS STEAM THIS EFFING SHRIMP!

2) GAAAA!!! If I didn’t have to pay bills I could be writing instead!

3) Sometimes the schedule changes and writer-brain cannot always adapt quickly, which causes frustration.

4) Sometimes you’d just rather not interact with the public for the very same reasons that you like to interact with the public.

5) When a shift is busy/arduous enough that by the end of it, you don’t have the energy or focus to write, like you planned to do.

6) In the day job you are not alone in terms of making stuff happen. (Oh, where is my sweet, sweet solitude!)

7) When a shift is too slow and you feel like, except for the money, you are wasting time that could be more productively spent writing.

8) *grumble grumble* Obligations. *grumble grumble* People wanting things.

9) When you work for someone else there’s a certain amount of control about what you are going to do with your day that you, necessarily, give up.

10) It forces much needed distance between me and the work. When I come back to the writing project, sometimes I find that the forced distance makes it harder to recapture what I was trying to accomplish.