{"id":4980,"date":"2020-02-05T20:57:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T03:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=4980"},"modified":"2020-02-02T20:57:47","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T03:57:47","slug":"fewer-substitutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2020\/02\/fewer-substitutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Fewer Substitutes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I taught someone the word “ersatz” this week. I only learned it last year, and it’s not in common usage.
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It means “substitute,” and I needed it to explain to her how I wanted this year to be different from how last year went.
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Last year was very busy. That has to shift.
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I worked really hard at my job…my jobby job. I had a lot of responsibilities and I got up early and stayed up late and nailed them to the wall. It took a lot out of me.
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And I’m proud that I did that, but in a sort of unsatisfying way.
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My job takes a lot of thought and I have to be smart and creative to do what needs to be done. So it is creative output.
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But it’s a very low-grade version. Like eating popcorn for dinner.
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I’ve done that before. I admit. I can eat a huge amount of popcorn and it is technically food. But I’ve learned that if I do that, I will feel weird.
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It’s not very good<\/em> for me. It will do. And that’s probably why I feel like I need to eat a whole lot of popcorn to replace a real nutritional dinner. But a lot of not-enough still isn’t enough.
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That’s where ersatz comes in. Ersatz means substitute. So, eating a huge bucket of buttery popcorn is ersatz dinner.
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And working hours and hours and weeks and weeks using my creative energy on work things is like eating popcorn for dinner.
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It’s ersatz creativity.
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And boy howdy, I know how to lean into that bad-for-me bucket of popcorn, or the never-ending inbox at work. Neither of those will tell me to stop. Work is very happy for me to keep it up.
\u00a0
But I feel weird and unsatisfied.
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I’ve learned my lesson about the popcorn, but it only just occurred to me that work is ersatz creativity. At least for me.
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I’ve been longing to create something. And it was easy to stay in my rut and create these factory spec cogs and widgets for my employer.
\u00a0
Until I had to spend several weeks sick in bed and I had a chance to see what I was doing.
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I had to clear some mind space to figure out how to get to what I really wanted. And rebuild some boundary walls.
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I have to have a reason to say no. \u00a0
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I would think I’d learned that. I have. And I have forgotten it.
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My first book is about this very topic. The Parable of Miriam the Camel Driver<\/em> expressed it beautifully. I need to re-read my own book.
\u00a0
This is my life. I loan my creativity out. And I want to keep some for myself, for the quality, nourishing self-expression I know I’ve capable of.
\u00a0
The easy way doesn’t satisfy. I don’t have to accept the substitute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I taught someone the word “ersatz” this week. I only learned it last year, and it’s not in common usage.\u00a0It means “substitute,” and I needed it to explain to her how I wanted this year to be different from how … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4981,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980\/revisions\/4981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}