Bake Your Own Cake
A little shout out this week to all the people whose job is also their creative expression.
I’m thinking not only of the people I work most closely with - comedians, actors, dancers, musicians, photographers and writers - but also anyone whose work is closely tied to their sense of self. Designers, architects, jewellers, carvers and all the other craftspeople who make stuff that colours our lives.
Plus really anyone who does a thing that gives them pride. There are plenty of tradies, public servants and health professionals who live and breathe the work they do. We’re often discouraged in this post-industrial world from identifying too closely with “what we do” – reminded we are human “beings” rather than human “doings”, that we should “work to live” rather than “live to work”.
This is a very different message from pre-industrial times when people’s identity – literally their very names - grew out of the thing they did. And so we have Bakers, Wheelers, Fishers, Taylors and oh so many Smiths.
I often wonder if the “you don’t have to love your job” school of thought is a capitalist trick to get us to do the boring bits, and settle for less in terms of job satisfaction.
Yet even so, there’s a counter theory that “if you find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. That you will be so buoyed by the joy of it, you’ll bounce out of bed in the morning with no sense of daily grind. Even more – that you’d merrily perform your tasks whether they paid the bills or not.
Though I’ve got to say, as much as I love my work, I am exhausted this morning. Yesterday, I disembarked from a cruise in Darwin – five shows – and spent the day travelling. Today, I was awake before my alarm went off at 4am to catch my final flight home.
My week had begun in Wellington with a couple of comedy shows and a workshop, and two very kind reviews. The week ended with fun shows on a cruise ship off the coast of Australia to enthusiastic audiences.
In the middle, there had been a show that was less fun (we were all very tired) and a weird moment the next day when I accidentally overheard an older man telling another couple that he really hadn’t enjoyed my show. Actually not my show, me.
It is a strange thing to hear yourself talked about – good or bad – though good is preferable. In those moments it is nigh on impossible to separate “who you are” from “what you do”.
It is also hard not to dwell on that negative criticism, and fail to balance it against all the positive feedback other passengers shared. That’ll be good old “negativity bias” born out of our survival instinct for threat assessment. It’s why every performer can gaze out at an audience of a thousand happy faces and find the one person scowling. It’s why you come home from work and tell the story of the irritating boss or the visiting “Karen”.
My therapist talks about needing to “bake your own cake” of approval – other people’s praise or appreciation can be the icing, but you need your own inner sense of the value of what you create.
And so I can cheerfully say two things. Not every show I do (not every piece of work anyone does) is a triumph. But some of them are.
Also when you need cheering up, I highly recommend literal cake.