“real work”

I hear a near-constant inner voice that says “You aren’t doing your real work,” whenever I am doing something other than writing or making art.

Maybe you experience this too.

Here’s why it is interesting: I don’t work publicly as an artist or as a writer. I don’t make money from writing or art. I have earned money in a wide variety of ways, ranging from running a clothing business to technology sales to real estate.

Yet, the nagging, pestering voice is there whenever I am doing anything other than writing, painting, art-making, or talking about spirituality. It’s there even when doing things that are important: community involvement, spending time with family, doing work that earns money, cleaning the house, or time with my beloved husband and beloved dog.

And the phrase I hear, over and over and over, and have heard for easily twenty-five years, is “this isn’t your real work.” I wish I could construe the origin of this phrase in some pop-psychological sense. If only it could be ascribed to the guilt of a religious upbringing. If I could know what gives this voice—be it angel or demon—the right to call some aspect of what I do “real work” and some other aspect “not real work.” And, despite the latter having all the external markers of being real work, such as contributing to the world, and earning money.

But instead, I’m left with this persistent mystery. What is “real work” for me? Why insists this adamant voice, in volume between a whisper and a roar, that one thing is not-real-work and the other is?

And why is it so hard to make that switch?

So now, the voice insists that writing this book series (Apophenia Gold) is my real work, and that it must be done by the time I am forty-nine, thus encompassing the seven year cycle which started when I was forty-two.

For what it’s worth, this discussion of “voice in my head” is a literary tool. But, I do think we are constantly prompted by other invisible beings, and our own higher selves to follow the numerous paths that unfold before us, and our own discernment skills allow us to determine which is the higher self path and which that of temptation.

Here’s a picture of my travel writing kit: a military grade waterproof case to assuage my husband’s concerns about ink stains, seven notebooks, three pens, two types of ink, a tiny New Testament, and reading (not pictured). Just in case I get bored.