I get very curious when I read something profound or creative.

When I was younger, I always dream of changing the world through my words and actions in some way.

I still yearn for that. But I am from an art school, majored in Graphic Design. I was an intern at ELLE Singapore once, but that isn’t enough.

Every time I browse through a job search portal, I read through the requirements for a writer’s position, but it never fails to mention “Degree in Journalism/Mass Communication” or “Experience in publications/writing”.

Publications – yes, I have designed pages/layouts before. Writing – yes, one page in ELLE.

But that isn’t experience in Singapore. Just because I am not from the Journalism/Mass Communication background, I have failed to obtain an interview every single time I apply for the position.

Once, I was offered another position in a company when I applied as a writer.

What is enough? The “real life” is the lack of opportunities. Too much focus on qualifications and experience that probably 50% of people do not get to pursue their dreams just because of a piece of paper.

I strive for my goals but 99.9% of the time, I face rejection – and it has led to a giving up phase and blaming it all on life.

On the other hand, I’ve always heard what all of these commenters hear – that your “real life” is the sum total of mundane necessities. As if there was some way for a life without expression, without beauty, to be worth living! As if punching a clock and mindlessly consuming until you finally die of old age was a life!

Whatever you dream of, that is your life. If you deny those dreams, what you are missing is *you*.

What I want to know is, how did that thing we do to pay the bills (assuming you don’t get to pay the bills with whatever your vocation is) become a way of defining ourselves? It’s just exchanging labour for capital, for pity’s sakes. Okay, there are people who get to make a living from what they love, but there are a lot more people who make a living from something they think is pretty okay, but they do what they love simply for the love of it.

Not *everything* should be reduced to payables and receivables.

Says it all really.

Writing hasn’t always been that for me. Mostly I’ve found that burst of life in activism, and I still struggle to balance the two. But that’s a good problem to have–two things that you love so much, that hurl you out of bed in the morning eager for another shot at it all.

I only use it to distinguish the actual world from Second Life or other online chat venues. “Gotta go: real life calls.”

Will I ever replace the day job with a writing career? It’s unlikely, but I’ve managed to make writing and podcasting stand out enough in my personal reality that I feel satisfied at the end of the ‘day’. Not 5pm when I leave the day job, but 7:30am when I close the MacBook on my precious hour of writing and 11pm when I put away the audio editing for the night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HZjC_7CeW4

I spent my first four decades in that kind of holding pattern, just marking time. And when my real life DID begin, seven years ago, it had NOTHING to do with paying the bills or mowing the lawn. It was the discovery of something that means as much to me as writing does to you.

Exactly what that is doesn’t matter; what matters is that it’s what I care most about, what gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And that’s more important than whether I’ll ever earn a living doing it.