I’ve struggled to separate my creative pursuits from career-oriented activities for the longest time.
I tried to make this happen in different ways. For example, I often would run two blogs at a time—one for personal writing and another for professional writing.
The personal blog would be where I shared quirky, vulnerable stories like my struggles with body image, sexuality, or conversations with people on their first orgasms. The professional-facing blog typically had content on avoiding burnout, building a portfolio, etc.
It was exhausting. It is exhausting. Trying to feed these areas of my life separately has been draining. And I’ve been trying to find a formula that merges these two facets of my life.
When I think about it, the purpose for separating both has been to maintain the integrity of the other. I don’t want to send a blog about orgasms to a potential employer; Nigeria is a very conservative place.
As someone who has developed content strategies, I will be the first to admit that different channels will demand a specific tone or theme. You don’t want to confuse your audience and blah, blah, blah.
However, the struggle to separate these areas into neat, segmented boxes has only paralyzed me. I haven’t made much effort to share personal or professional stories in the last few years. My personal life and work have increasingly crossed over, so I just abandoned it.
I’m a person, not a product or company. I have overlapping and disconnected interests. My politics is not separate from how I approach work, no matter how much it seems. And I wither when I’m in professional spaces that don’t make room for creativity.
But, for the umpteenth time (for my friends who will read this), I miss writing. I miss sharing my thoughts on my varied interests. I miss happy, carefree, humorous writing where I’m not worried about a grammatical error or sharing something that doesn’t align with the “professional worker” image.
The last seven months of my life have been the most exciting in half a decade, and I’m bursting with stories and ideas. My WhatsApp status has suffered enough, and it’s now inadequate for things I want to share.
Besides the personal growth I’ve experienced, I am also transitioning in my professional life and would love to share the things I’m learning or discovering. I want to end this with a promise of consistency and a set timeline to expect, but I don’t have that to give.
What I have is an idea of what I want to achieve. I can tell you what I want to bring to life.
I want my creative and professional practice to sit side by side. I want to talk about the songs I like and an essay that made me cry. I want to write about a theory I learned in class and the possible applications I’ve observed. I want to write about building a career in Marketing and transitioning from one specialty to another. I want to attempt writing fiction again.
I’m not trying to do this from scratch. There are people I’ve admired for their ability to merge both, and I’ll use them as my blueprint while I try to find my path. Let’s see how this goes, eh?
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