We usually juggle between two juxtaposed realities; on one side is the “day job” or the job we took to found our living expenses and our real work, that lives on the other side of the equation — our creative production, the profession that we pursue everyday in the hopes of eventually being able to live off only our creative work in the future. And the problem is exactly the notion of in-the-future.

When will that dream actually become reality? I find that every time I change my day job I don’t just change what I do for 30-40 hours a week, but also a small part of my ideals and my aspirations. When I used to work at a big camera company, I also became involved with the photography subculture; endless talks about how our company is better than the other few, how this lens could be so much better if this and that were taken into consideration while it was being designed and a bunch of other conversations about, well, cameras.

The issue I had, and still have, was that I had no intention of becoming a commercial photographer, as much as I had no intention of becoming a printer salesperson when working for a big printer company. But the idea that it’s just going to be a part-time job or a side job or any other form of financial support was always burdened by the collective consciousness of the groups I was part of while working there. And I liked the team spirit of every one of those groups, don’t get me wrong, but the issue was that none of them were really my tribe. While we creatives can and do care about a lot of things, including the gadgets and toys we use to produce our work, we don’t hold them up to the same standards as those who make their bread and butter promoting, using and selling them.

My question is simply how can we balance the work and creative work relationship without letting either interfere with each other? I liked being a photographer for a small while, but it wasn’t really what I was pursuing, and while I love technology a lot, it isn’t such a big part of my life as it is for someone working at Samsung or Apple. So where and how should we go and do our little balancing acts, if as soon as we stretch the rope, the lines between both fields get blurred so much?