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The Season Finale That Never Was (Cont.): Creative Platypus

Ok, so I couldn't resist...

I've been fiddling around with Paint for my own amusement and using it to dress up a few of my pen and ink drawings. Spending time around the local comic shop with a few coworkers recently has also put comic book layouts are on the brain. My own efforts are about as far from Hellboy or Rai as I am from Pandemonium or 4001 A.D. Still, it's fun to play around with a little zero-risk creativity.

Often we wish our hobbies were jobs. Jobs can be wonderful things when we love what we do, but they are also work. There are deadlines to meet and customers to satisfy. We may enter a business in one department and drift inevitably over time into another. In other words, when we're tied to the paycheck, we have to follow the money. In our unpaid hobbies, however, we are free. No one penalizes us for puttering away at side projects. The labor is unprofitable by definition.

Henry David Thoreau worked for six weeks a year and then lived simply so that he could do what he wanted with the other forty-six. For him, that meant doing the work of a naturalist, or what we might today think of as the duties of a park ranger. His challenge in Walden to "simplify, simplify" is not meant to be a call to do as he did but it is call to all of us who have yet to land our dream job. If our work takes us away from our loves, then maybe we can reduce the time we spend at it by reducing our wants. The balance can then be spent as we will. The trick is to know what we really want.

So... Bad Nun
How far would you go to find your calling?
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