The Question I Keep Asking About Work and Identity

Why does it feel like betrayal?

I'm asking because I don't have a good answer yet.

For years, I told myself that my creative work was the real me. The day job was just the shell. The necessary evil. The thing I did to fund the thing I actually cared about.

So when the day job started going well—when I got the promotion, when I actually cared about a project, when I felt proud of something I built at work—it felt wrong.

Like I was cheating on my creative life.

I keep wondering: is it possible to be good at the day job and still be a real creative? Or does caring about one mean abandoning the other?

Here's what I'm noticing.

The more I fight it, the worse both things get. When I resent the day job, I'm exhausted by the time I get to my creative work. When I pretend the creative work is the only thing that matters, I half-ass the thing that actually pays my rent.

What if they're not in competition?

I keep coming back to this question: What if I'm not my work? Either of them?

The day job doesn't define me. But neither does the creative practice. They're both things I do. Things I care about, in different ways.

Maybe the betrayal I feel isn't real. Maybe it's just an old story I told myself about who I was supposed to be.

I'm still sitting with this. I don't have it figured out.

But I'm wondering if the path forward isn't choosing one over the other. It's letting go of the idea that either one is me.

What would happen if you stopped treating your day job like the enemy?

I'm not sure. But I'm curious enough to try.