Julie Chibbaro

Today we have a guest blogger, Laura Zam. Laura is an award-winning writer and performer who has created five one-person plays. She has performed at the Woolly Mammoth Theater, Theater J, The Kennedy Center, and The National Theatre, among others. Using humor, Laura is currently working on a book about the aftermath of sexual abuse. She teaches creative people how to empower themselves and make a living doing what they love. Her website is www.laurazam.com

LAURA ZAM:


I have a hobby!

This is great because I’ve never had a hobby before. Historically, during my free time⎯in between job commitments⎯I’ve worked on my writing projects. To the outside eye, my writing probably appeared to be a hobby (it certainly looked that way to the IRS). But that was not the case, not to me. See, I was trying to make a career out of this. According to my dictionary, a hobby is “an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure.” No, writing was not done for pleasure. Writing was done so I could move ahead and seriously realize my dream life. This was not a hobby at all.

I am happy to report that my career has picked up. No longer am I carving out free time for my writing projects; I’m now doing them full-time. This means writing is my job. And like all jobs, it’s work. Don’t get me wrong. Writing has always been creative and fun, but like all work, it has also been part of a larger context of professional goals. And now, especially, writing is filled with deadlines and circumscribed by discipline: I basically work a 9 to 5 schedule. By the weekend, I definitely need a break.

You want to know a secret? A big advantage of doing a job that you love is that you get time off from it too! I’m talking about glorious Saturday and Sunday. No, wait, there’s all that cleaning to be done ⎯of house, clothes, car, and in-box. Begrudgingly, I’ve given Saturday over to that. That leaves Sundays when I absolutely must recharge. In the past, I’ve found a variety of lazy Sunday activities that don’t involve a computer or complicated sentences: long walks, going to the zoo with my hubby, brunching with friends. But everything changed last weekend when I discovered a hobby⎯multimedia collage!

Keep in mind what I said above: that a hobby is done purely for pleasure⎯ meaning only for one’s self. I mention this again because I have absolutely no talent when it comes to the visual arts. And that’s great.

See, what I’ve discovered in having a creative outlet with no aspirations attached⎯no expectations, no perfectionism, no skillful knowledge, no nothing⎯ is that this activity has a freedom that writing will never have for me. Might this alternative artistic play be necessary? Maybe it’s a way to strengthen connection to one’s muse, just like when couples go on vacation (leaving their ordinarily stressful lives together) so they can bond with each other anew. Yes, multimedia collage might just be a way for me to continuously rediscover my creativity lover.

I hope so because it’s fun, and I even made it functional, putting my collages in a book that also includes my goals and action steps for the year (OK, I can’t get too far away from my aspirations – so sue me).

If you’re looking for a fun way to reignite your creative spark, try an art form at which you suck. And if you find one that uses glitter glue, even better.