Making Time to be Creative

Hello everyone!

It’s been about a month since I’ve started working full time in office once more. It feels almost silly to admit I’m getting used to working in an office eight hours a day five days a week. But I also recognize that, as silly as it may sound, it’s the reality of life post quarantine where work from home became more normalized. But now that I’m working in office, I’ve started to understand the experience of other creatives who have to go to work eight hours a day, commute, and still find time to do the creative work their passionate about.

Initially I thought it wouldn’t be that big of a difference. Working eight hours in an office versus working eight hours at home, I didn’t expect it to feel so different. But something I had failed to consider would have such an impact on me was commuting to and from work. For me to function rather normally, I usually have to drink three mugs of coffee and because of the commute time to work, I have to wake up very early to drink enough coffee. The biggest issue I seem to be facing now is a lack of energy after work for those precious hours to be creative.

What is one to do to manage such a problem? I have to compensate for the lack of energy somehow, but the answer I’ve found has been rather challenging. In short, it’s required me to change a lot of aspects of my life to essentially be healthier so that I have that energy after work. Naturally part of this required me to eat healthier as my diet has been rather all over the place. But the other aspect has been dedicating more time to sleep and to exercise. I’ve slowly started to have a bit more energy to do my creative works. It’s a bit of a challenge I have to admit, but if it’s what it takes to keep writing and drawing, it’s what I have to do.

But this also means that what time I do have after work I need to be more focused and not so easily distracted. That has probably been the most difficult aspect of this whole change. Coming home from a long day of work, it’s hard to resist the urge to veg out and just watch YouTube or play games rather than take the effort and energy to be productive. The willpower and discipline to do that is something that I once had but lost during lockdown. I’m hoping to rebuild that so that I can achieve my writing and drawing goals, especially since I have the motivation to get started on my manga project and write my fourth book.

It’s difficult but I believe we can do this, we can be creative in this draining world.

– Raphael