Rethinking “job” satisfaction as a creative

A few more thoughts on the differences between creative and non-creative work…Can you tell I’ve thought a lot about this?

Working in technology for a mid-sized local company provides many opportunities for finding satisfaction and success. Completing a project on-time and on-budget, while exceeding on deliverables, sure. That’s totally satisfying. Catching a system problem before something “BAD” happens, Yup. I do enjoy the process of creating and implementing solutions, but the vast majority of this is a logical and fairly unemotional procedure. (Even “procedure” sounds completely lacking in emotive content. Unless it’s something unpleasant that has to be done in a medical office, but I digress.

In a recent conversation with one of my favorite artist’s, she brought up the fact that I needed to consider that satisfaction for a creative endeavor is often quite different from, oh, let’s call it knowledge work. As per usual, she made an excellent point. The more that I’ve thought about, the more I realize that there are some dramatic differences in the various degrees of satisfaction, fulfillment and passion between my two careers.

Poppyseed sans skirt

Following a particularly fun graduation photo shoot, I would catch myself literally bouncing around happily as I was going about chores at home. There was an elevated happiness from that two hour shoot that hung around for the rest of the day. I have been reminded of that feeling, as it keeps coming up, whether reviewing photos with the clients, or selecting my favorites from the shoot, and, if we’re going to be really honest, hearing the “ooh’s and ahh’s” from others at what we produced. (I’m nowhere near arrogant enough to think that this is all me-it’s a collaboration, and takes a lot of moving parts to all go in the same direction.)

There are noticeable time-shifts, too, when I am shooting and editing. Time either slows down to where I can savor each different shot that I take, or, I look up and three hours have passed in the blink of an eye. Photography grabs my attention, and doesn’t stray far from my thoughts-Be it seeing a particularly neat setting, or a thought of something that I’d like to try, or simply the prospect of looking forward to a shoot.

I find satisfaction in every step of photography, and am constantly challenged to learn more, try more and continually step out of my comfort zone and capture these moments, planned or unplanned. At every step, the creative side of my brain is engaged and active. Even making simple edits to a photo requires a good deal of thought and judgement, only loosely based on logic. Feeling is critical, once you have the essential technical aspects down. Quite different from saying “I love these 323 lines of code! How stunning!”