01:56 || 19.4.25
“Corporate Creative” | Being a Creative in a Corporate World
The fact of the matter is I’m a creative. However, the reality is, until the money is moneying, I also have to be a corporate. Here’s how I’m trying to find the balance:
Backstory
A year and a bit ago I left a job I had been at for nearly 2 years, to join a company that fired me in 2 weeks. The only reason I left the initial job in the first place was so I could get something more hybrid so I could spend more time being a “creative”. I left more than £10k in commission on the table thinking I was about to go off and do the Lord’s work…if only I knew.
When I got fired from the second job, something in me remembered the younger me who always said “f*ck a 9-5”. The thing was, job number one fully changed my perspective of this whole thesis. I genuinely enjoyed working there but when I got fired from the second job, I wasn’t trying to hear it from anybody. I said I’d never go back to a 9-5.
A Year and a Half Later
“Life showed me pepper” as Nigerians would say. After a year and a half of being funemployed, words from people I respected, the looks of concern from my family, and a 30-day recalibration in Naija, I finally came back to my senses. I went back to work.
~
Elementary
Being creative is us in our complete element. For me, it’s writing. For others, it could be photography, painting, knitting, skating whatever it is. But that act of creating or being in a creative flow is a feeling that can’t be compared to anything in the world. And the chances are, if given the option, we’d be more than satisfied to do that thing for the rest of our lives so long as the necessities are covered.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like that. That’s where I f*cked up. I fully thought, if I just do what I’m “passionate” about, the world would somehow bypass the fact I had bills to pay like say my landlord would read my work and be like “you know what bro, don’t worry about rent this month, I see you’re cooking”.
The Basic
Nahh g! There are processes that need to be followed. You need your basics. Food. water, shelter. Basic Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Now it depends. If you still live with your parents and don’t necessarily have any serious responsibilities, then you’ve arguably got a bit of leeway to hone in on your craft.
My dumbass just stopped paying rent…literally (I still owe the landlord £5k – story for another day). I had a BMW 1 Series on finance (finally paid off, but sold – I miss her man!). And a maxed-out overdraft. How do you expect to create in that sort of environment? It’s not sustainable. Cover the basics.
Looking back, I didn’t necessarily have to go corporate to start earning, but that’s what I knew. I did a few kitchen porter jobs here and there, but never enough to cover any real costs. Plus, I couldn’t rewire my mind to do that for 30+ hours like some people I knew. Whereas with an office job, I knew exactly what my minimum take home would be a month and because I work in recruitment, if I played my cards right, there was also commission up for grabs.
Besides, even if you hate your job, that feeling when the cheque lands is enough to keep you going sometimes.
Structured
Money aside, the structure I get from going to the office is also something I took for granted. The lie we tell ourselves is, since we’ve got all the time in the world, we’re going to use it “grafting”. Straight cap. I was out of work for a year and a half and I genuinely feel like I did less creatively than I did when I was working 8am – 6pm shifts. Why?
It’s simple. The more time you have to play with, the more you play. But if you’re running on finite time, once work is done there’s no time for games. Occassionally, I think back to that “gap year” (because that’s really what it was), and I wonder what I spent all that time doing. And even though I have camera footage and journals to give me an idea, the truth is there is still a huge amount of time that went unaccounted for.
The challenge now is making time to be creative. It’s easy to fall into the corporate abyss. Really and truly, chances are you won’t even realise you’re in it until you come out of it. For instance, I went through my camera for the first time since July and it dawned on me that this was something I used to do on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. But I just hadn’t…
Made Time
9 times out of 10, by the time I’m done with work, if I make it to the gym, the next thing I want to do is sleep. Finish work at 5:30pm, get home at 7pm (My once 20-minute commute is now just over an hour), eat, gym for 8pm, and back for 9:30pm. By this point, the mental conversation becomes what next?
This is more or less the only window in the day that can be spent doing something that you want to do. However, it’s not a matter of whether or not you “want” to do it. Of course, you do. It’s more a thing of, do I have enough energy left in the tank to get it done?
Let’s be real, jobs are tiring. Be that the physical demand of standing up all day in a hospitality job or the mental stress of office meetings and deadlines. It’s draining either way. That said, once you’re doing something you want/enjoy, the energy creates itself. Occasionally the hardest part is just summoning the effort to pick up the pen or turn on the camera.
Refreshing
At the end of the day, it’s a game of sustainable consistency. Something I’ve always struggled with. Losing momentum is dangerously easy and all it takes is a few days of not allowing your creative mind to tick. It’s deadline season at work and before you know it, you’re taking your work laptop home to do additional work that cuts into your “creative work” time.
I’ll be so real. If I didn’t keep my sketchbook with me for my commutes, the creative in me would have gotten lost somewhere along the way. Even more lost than he already was. Besides journaling and the odd LinkedIn post, for months, that book was my only window into expressing any form of creativity.
Friends in Higher Places
Shout out all my dargs that reminded me about the finer side of life. Colleagues are cool and all, but even though you see these people more than your family, most times, the chat doesn’t make it past the office walls. So outside of work, besides your work, the only way to get back into that creative space is to be in a creative space.
2022/23, at my peak creativity levels, I was at a show/event/space every other week. BrighterDaysFamily, BeauBeaus, PlayPiem, The Orange Room, Open Mics, only God knows how much mileage I did. Whereas nowadays, it’s only recently that I’ve started popping out again. And when I do, it makes a difference. Sh*t, sometimes you don’t even need to be outside outside, just catch up with a friend that you know is a creative and speaks the same lanugage as you.
I can’t lie Shaggy and Aash kept me tapped in when I was off the grid. Something as simple as conversations about ideas or past works can be fruitful enough to keep you creatively inspired after a week of scanning Excel spreadsheets. A 10-minute call or 1-hour link up, just to touch base and make sure everyone’s still doing what they can to keep the dream alive.
Due Time
When it’s all said and done, it all comes down to what are we doing all this for. I f*cked up when I started depending on my creativity solely as a means to make money. It snatched the joy from it. I was no longer creating from the heart but rather for some charts. The stats and the figures.
Based on conversations I’ve had with creatives, usually the ultimate dream is that their creativity is the tool that builds their desired life, it’s mine too. However, what my impatient ass failed to realise is, when the time is right it will come. Forced creations are usually the quickest to fail and I tried to force a lot of things.
So for the time being, the best thing I can do for myself is cooperate with the corporations while I coordinate my creations.
W~
Update: I got let go again (3.1.26)
