Some 20 years ago, I attended a spiritual retreat for a long weekend and got to meet — for the first time — my friend Richard, whom I had known online for several years.
One of the points we always related on was the fact that we had felt like misfits for most of our lives because we both lack the competitive spirit an eternal drive that was typically required to get anywhere in corporate America.
Instead of mapping out careers and success, we spent a lot of our time mapping out how modestly we could live — and still be comfortable — while doing exactly enough to make that particular lifestyle possible.
Of course, we had already done this for many years (independently of each other), but our friendship blossomed around this feeling that we finally had a friend who understood where we were coming from.
It should be said that these are concepts easier to theorize about than actually execute because the world is definitely not structured to support such an approach!
Anyway, my point in bringing this up was that I have Richard to thank for originally coining the term ”Creative Slacker” to describe how we were trying to navigate life.
As we head into this year 2025, I am pretty much the same Creative Slacker I was back then, at least in spirit.
Mrs. Denmarkguy has gently — and rather frequently — chided me for referring to myself as a slacker, because I actually work quite hard. and I admit that. But it's a bit of a conundrum because I "work quite hard" at finding ways that allow me to not have to work.
When I look backwards across my life — from this age of 64 — I recognize that even when I was in my teens the whole concept of Building A Career felt somewhat wrong and even abhorrent to me.
Try as I might to make it otherwise, the only real ambition in life was always to just do what I needed to do to get by, and no more than that. Yes, I was undoubtedly a massive disappointment to my mother whom — I suspect — wanted nothing more than to be able to say ”my son, the doctor” or ”my son, the attorney” when talking to her friends.
Along the way, a number of well-meaning people have insisted that ”my only problem” was that I hadn't yet met whatever-it-is that fills me with the kind of passion that would make me want to work really hard and excel at it, and "build a career" in it.
As I said, those assessments are well-meaning, but they miss the reality that in order for that to be meaningful, the "thing" you have to have aforementioned passion for has to something that is also popular with a significant percentage of the generally programmed mainstream.
There's no "career" in being passionate about something only a dozen people on the planet are interested in...
Anyway, my reason for suddenly thinking about Creative Slacking actually stems from checking in this morning and seeing that the price of our resident Hive token increased significantly overnight.
In the life of an ostensible Creative Slacker, the implication is that if I earn a few more dollars from blogging, it means I'll have a few more dollars that perhaps are enough to buy a bag of potatoes or two, putting just a little bit more distance between myself and the idea of actually having to work.
No, this is not something I go around shouting from the rooftops, it's just a private thought I have within my myself.
I suppose Creative Slackers are ultimately a form of ”opportunists.”
Not opportunists in the conventional sense of taking advantage of people, but opportunists in the sense of seeing an opportunity, seizing it, and making the most of it... in place of simply being focused on one thing that we call our career.
In a sense, this particular characteristic started to manifest in me even when I was a child, when realized that I could walk into parts of the deep woods that I only knew, pick wild raspberries and sell them by the pound.
For most people, those wild raspberry bushes might only present themselves as an opportunity to have a quick snack while hiking, or even to pick a little bag full to take home for dinner, but for me it was an opportunity to not have to work at the corner store in order to get extra pocket money.
In much a similar way, the majority of my life has centered around finding opportunities in my immediate environment such as turning my hobbies into sideline income opportunities… just like noticing that the price of Hive has risen serves as a reminder that if that is able to sustain itself over time I might be able to supplement our meager budget with a few (liquid) earnings from blogging.
It's definitely not something I'm counting on, it's just something I'm pointing out as part of the mindset I have lived with for most of my life; a mindset that originally prompted me to turn my childhood stamp collecting hobby into a sideline business as a collectibles dealer.
Well, I think I'll draw the line here and publish this because I have to get back to aforesaid stamps... and then there's the whole TL;DR issue, as well!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful reminder of your Sunday!
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Created at 2025.01.05 15:07 PST
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