Wealth or Time? You choose
WEALTH
OR TIME? YOU CHOOSE
Mario
D’Couto
Now as a working professional, I am by no means any master at time management and I have certainly had my fair share where I have slipped away from making the best use of my time. Besides working full time, I try to pursue other forms of creative pursuits like this blogpost where I use it as a platform to share the insights that I have learned through my reading and just from the experiences that life has taught me, alongside with Youtube where I try to make sense of the different experiences life has taught me through the lens of a Catholic perspective [if in case, you would like to check my Youtube channel, here is the link, https://www.youtube.com/@makingsenseoflife3135 ]. Plus I upload musical pieces on Instagram [ here is the link to my Instagram account, https://www.instagram.com/maressiano/ ] and although I call most of my pieces “Random Jamz”, it is anything but random given the thought process that goes behind coming up with the chord progressions, the melody, the arrangement of the instruments that will be used in that particular instrumental piece for although it may appear that I am soloing on the guitar to a backing track, I create my own backing tracks. I do occasionally post covers too but that happens on and off. I also intend to soon start my own podcast as well, once again using it as a platform to share my insights of what I have learned through my reading and from the experiences that life has taught me. This is not taking to account that I work full time in an office and can be bogged down by the demands of everyday life. At times, I wonder if I am trying to bite more than I can chew and yet this is what gives me fulfilment, meaning and purpose and for as long as I am alive, I will continue to pursue it.
Maybe you too have your dreams and aspirations but feel restricted to pursue them because of work and the demands of everyday life that you just don’t have the time to allocate to such activities. Here are a few examples of some of those famous people who pursued their interests despite being working professionals themselves like you and me, which I hope you can draw inspiration from, which are as follows,
Ø The American novelist and essayist
Nicholson Baker worked a series of jobs in Boston and New York while writing
his first book, “The Mezzanine.” It’s been said that when he worked a
job outside of Boston that required a 90 minute commute, he bought a
mini-cassette recorder and dictated his writing while he drove. He would also
make use of his lunch breaks to write which he described as a pure, blissful
hour of freedom in the middle of the day to make notes for a novel and then
would later put all his lunch-hour commuting notes together into a coherent
novel.
Ø In 1908, Franz Kafka landed a
position at the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute in Prague, where he was
fortunate to be on the coveted ‘single shift’ system, which meant office
hours from 8 or 9 a.m. in the morning until 2 or 3 p.m. in the afternoon.
Although this was a distinct improvement over his previous job at a different
insurance firm, which required long hours and frequent overtime, Kafka felt
stymied. He was living with his family in a cramped apartment where he could
muster the concentration to write only late at night, where everyone else was
asleep. It is said that he would start around 10:30 p.m. in the night and go up
to 1 or 2 or 3 a.m.in the morning. On one occasion he even went until 6 a.m. in
the morning. He once wrote to his fiancée, Felice Bauer in 1912 about his life,
“Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment
is noisy and if a pleasant, straight – forward life is not possible, then one
must wriggle through by subtle manoeuvrers.” Such was the way he
worked.
Ø Joseph Cornell was an artist known
for making shadow boxes. A shadow box is a shallow, glass – fronted display
case, like a deep picture frame, used to showcase and protect three –
dimensional objects, souvenirs and so on, creating a sense of depth and story –
telling for items like sports jerseys, medals, travel and so on. Unlike a flat
frame, it provides space between the glass and the blackboard, allowing for
layered, dimensional arrangements that capture memories or highlight
collectibles. What’s interesting about this is that he did this while working a
full time job, not forgetting that he was probably the sole bread – winner for
his family where he lived with his mother and his handicapped brother. He was
never married. He worked at nights at the kitchen table, sorting and assembling
materials for his boxes. It was not easy going. Some nights he felt too
fatigued from his day job to concentrate on his art but eventually with time,
he mustered the courage to give up his job and focus on his art full – time.
Ø
The
American poet Wallace Stevens would use his lunch break time where he worked at
the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, going for an hour long walk wherein
during this time, he composed poetry, stopping now and then to scribble lines
on one of the half – dozen or so envelopes he always stuffed in his pocket. At
work too, he would occasionally pause to write down fragments of poems, which
he kept filed in the lower right – hand drawer of his desk and he would
routinely hand his secretary these various scraps of verse for typing. Although
his colleagues were aware of his poetry, Stevens assiduously avoided talking
about it, preferring to maintain the face of a mild – mannered, somewhat aloof
businessman in all his public dealings with the world. In fact, far from
stifling his creativity, his job seemed to suit his temperament and even encourage
his poetry as he once said, “I find that having a job is one of the best
things in the world that could happen to me. It introduces discipline and
regularity into one’s life. I am just as free as I want to be.”
Ø The Irish poet W. B. Yates made a
habit of writing even amidst the lack of inspiration as he believed that not
doing so affected his concentration. If he did not write, he believed it would
break his regular schedule.
Ø The American pianist and composer,
George Gershwin, was also dismissive of inspiration as he once said that if he
waited for the muse (inspiration), he would have composed at most 3 songs a
year. For him, he found it was better to work every day. His brother, Ira
Gershwin had this to say about him, “Like the pugilist, the songwriter must
always keep in training” which was pretty evident his life.
Ø In the late 1950’s, the American
poet James Dickey had lost a university teaching position and needed a way to
make money while he worked on his poetry. With the help of his sister -in –
law’s neighbour, an executive at the advertising firm McCann Erickson, Dickey
landed a job at the firm’s Atlanta office, writing radio commercials for Coca –
Cola bottles around the county. It was a demanding position, made more so by
the fact that Dickey was simultaneously trying to find time for his literary
endeavours during the workday. He once said, “Every time I had a minute to spare,
which was not often, I would stick a poem in the typewriter where I had been
typing Coca – Cola ads.” Unlike most of his colleagues, Dickey kept his
office door shut. If a colleague came knocking, he would clean his desk of
poems and poetry books. One colleague recounted Dickey’s constant efforts to
outsmart his bosses, “If they said, ‘Alright, today we need 10
television commercials and five radio commercials and two print ads, this is
your assignment for the day’, he would say, ‘Okay’ and would then
shut the door and within one hour, he would have it all done. Thus he would
spend the rest of the time working on his own work – his correspondence, his
poems. But of course they didn’t know that. They figured, ‘That will keep him
busy all day’, but he was so smart and so fast, he could get it all done.”
Dickey eventually worked for three Atlanta ad agencies, seeking senior
positions in the hope that developing big – picture creative campaigns would be
less demanding than churning out a constant stream of radio and television ads.
Meanwhile, his poetry career was gaining momentum wherein he had won several
significant prizes and he was working hard to finish a manuscript for
publication. By 1961, however, his boss had caught on to the fact that Dickey
was more concerned with literature than with advertising and fired him wherein
he then wrote to his friend that after five and a half years of working in what
he called, “the dark Satanic mills of American business”, he was finally
out at last.
Ø It’s been said that the English
novelist and poet, George Orwell could not support himself financially with his
writing alone and so worked at Booklover’s Corner located in South End Green in
Hampstead, North London where he would use his free time during work to do his
writing.
Ø The novelist and short – story
writer, Bernard Malamud was a very time – conscious man and although he made
his living as a teacher for most of his life, he always found time to write and
apparently never lacked for discipline as he once said, “Discipline is an
ideal for the self. If you have to discipline yourself to achieve art, you
discipline yourself.” Malamud began writing seriously in 1940 when he
was 26 years old and soon after landed a job teaching night school in Brooklyn.
His classes were from 6 p.m. in the evening till 10 p.m. in the night and so he
was able to write for 5 hours during the day, typically between 10 a.m. in the
morning and 5 p.m. in the evening with a break at 12:30 p.m. to eat lunch, shave
and read for an hour. After eight years of this schedule, Malamud accepted a
university teaching position in Oregon, moving there in 1949 with his wife and
their young son. At the time, he had yet even to sell a story. But over the
next dozen years, he wrote 4 books, thanks in part to a favourable teaching
schedule. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were devoted to classes, office hours
and grading papers; Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, Malamud spent on his
novels and short stories. A full morning of writing usually amounted to only a
page or two at least and after lunch, he revised the morning’s output.
