A Creative Life, On Our Terms
On writing, rest, and why sustainability matters more than success
From Camille:
Before I ever seriously considered becoming a full-time freelance writer, I published extremely raw and vulnerable poems on Medium. The year was 2021, though I’m sure they’re still out there somewhere. I vividly remember the first time I hit “publish” on the app—before it required such a time and financial investment that it stopped being worth it to me.
Maybe because I never took my writing seriously in the first place.
My creative writing.
Back then, I worked both volunteer EMS shifts responding to emergent and non-emergent calls, and paid EMS gigs at events. Before I had driven my Prius back to Philadelphia to live with me—where we’d have a few chaotic adventures in the six months before I turned around and moved home—I had to find a way to get myself to the events I worked.
Sometimes that meant taking an Uber to the office in Yeadon, a tiny suburb in Chester County. Not far, but just far enough that the train wasn’t worth the time it took, even if it saved money. So most of the events I worked were the ones I could reach via public transit—concerts, sporting events, things like that.
Once I had my car, though, everything changed. I could drive to the office, park, and take the ambulance in with everyone else—which I often did. And on one of those drives, as we crested the bridge over the Delaware River, my heart felt light. I had just chosen not to go to medical school, and in the wake of that decision, I was doing something bold and freeing: publishing my writing online.
Around me, the usual cynical chatter buzzed—bitter conversations from people who had spent their lives in EMS, caught in the churn of constant shifts.
I was only a few months away from my last patient encounter. Ever.
As phrases like “you’re such a pussy” and “if you’re so fucking sure, why don’t you do it then?” floated around me, I felt like I was clutching a secret to my chest. These people would eat me alive if they knew I wrote poetry—and published it. It was a complete contrast to the world I inhabited, where we hated Donna because she was always prepared, hated John because he never was, hated Jim because he was lazy as shit... and on and on and on.
I was new to online publishing. I’d never had a blog. I’d stopped writing for fun after the wildly good Twilight fanfiction my best friend and I wrote in middle school. But I was drawn back in.
And quickly overwhelmed.
Especially by the noise around how to make money doing it. Because that’s what I wanted: to make money writing.
One, because my only planned career path had just crumbled—and even though I felt good about that choice, I had no idea what was next.
Two, because I genuinely loved to write. During the first year of the pandemic, I’d filled journals with poems no one but one of my closest friends had read. She’d shrugged and said, “These are good.”
And all it takes is one person, right?
Three—and maybe this was the biggest one—because I had internalized the belief that something that made you money was inherently valuable. If it didn’t make money, it wasn’t worth much.
I struggled from the start: with writing for other people. With consistency. With niching down. I didn’t even know what to call my niche—“woman rambles about life in an unflinchingly honest way”?
I struggled to stay committed to making writing profitable.
If I’m honest, I didn’t believe I could do it.
I didn’t believe I could take creative writing and make it a career.
And if I’m even more honest—I still don’t.
I believe people can. Out there in the world. I just don’t believe I’m one of them.
And I guess that’s the problem, right?
I believe we have a duty to follow our callings—to honor the desires of our hearts. I believe our art can help others feel seen.
I’ve been told mine has.
But what happens when you can’t bridge the gap between believing you must write, at all costs, and not believing in your ability to make it profitable?
I think you end up like me—and like a lot of quasi-creatives—building a career adjacent to what you really love.
Now, I’m a medical writer. I genuinely love my career. It’s also not always creatively fulfilling. Sometimes it is. Most of the time, it’s not.
It’s not always meaningful. I’m grateful when it is—when I know my work is making a real impact.
But if I’m really honest, I’d give it up to be able to write full-time, creatively.
That wouldn’t be easy. I’ve built my career with relentless determination and now have an invaluable network of not only fellow professionals, but friends. I’m trusted to be good at what I do.
That trust took years to build, and so did the skills that back it up, the ones I’m still building today. I’m not ready to let it go—and I can’t always tell if that’s because I love the job, love what I built, or just love the security. Maybe all three.
But if someone said, choose, I’d choose creative writing.
Luckily, no one’s asking me to.
Still, something I discovered—and struggled with—while building this career was that the demand for constant (or at least consistent) output never stopped. I don’t just mean workload, though that too.
I mean content.
One of the reasons I never took creative writing seriously was because taking it seriously meant marketing it. And that felt... weird. Vulnerable. Unnatural.
It felt bizarre to SEO-optimize my creativity. To make Instagram Reels about my “process.” To jump through algorithmic hoops just to be seen.
And in building my freelance health and medical writing business, I ran into the same barriers. I wish I’d started writing on LinkedIn sooner, or built a website earlier—but I didn’t know where to begin. My career was evolving rapidly, and advice was everywhere.
And unlike with creative writing, this time it felt unnatural in a different way: to market myself as an authority when I didn’t feel like one. To sell myself as a solution.
Now, it doesn’t feel weird to market my business. It’s a business. But content creation is still exhausting. Whether it’s blogs that aren’t intellectually stimulating, social posts, or new service pages every time I pivot—it takes something out of me.
So this journey has left me with some questions:
How do we keep up with the content machine?
What’s the line between creativity and content for content’s sake?
When do we get to rest if we’re always either creating something or promoting something we’ve created?
Here’s what I’ve learned:
You can’t keep up. Content turns over too fast. And if you’re anything like me, you enjoy consuming it less and less.
That line is blurry. Creativity should be nurtured—but it also has to give something back. How does the content make you feel? And if you outsource it, does it still feel like you?
The third question has a longer answer, which is where I’ve landed:
Whatever way you choose to engage with the digital world, your creative expression—whether outside work, at work, or both—has to feel sustainable.
It needs nurturing. It needs to feel like you. And it needs to be detached from outcomes.
I’ve built this “set of rules” for my creative and business work after watching how easy it is to start something exciting and then completely forget about it two months later.
There’s a reason Vaani and I publish once a month. A reason we host monthly community chats. A reason we talk about taking breaks. It’s not because we burn out and abandon things.
It’s because life is hard, and we want to keep doing this.
So whether you’re promoting a passion project or the business that sustains you, ask yourself:
Where do you want people to find you? Is social media part of that? If it drains you, is it worth it? Can you outsource parts of it?
What promotional efforts align with your values and the life you want?
How often can you realistically do them?
Something the past five years have taught me—from poems to writing business proposals—is that creativity isn’t a lightning bolt from the heavens. It’s scheduled. It’s nurtured. It’s planned.
Creativity needs calendars. Creativity needs planners. Creativity needs multiple income streams. Creativity requires discipline.
And circling back to where I started—where I admitted I still don’t believe I can make a living off creative writing—I want to ask how limiting that belief is. Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you write because you love it. Maybe you crochet tiny people for stop-motion films. Maybe you make art just for you.
And maybe you say things like, “It doesn’t matter if anyone reads this,” while secretly wondering how that poet got a book deal via Instagram. Or how the girl with the Frog and Toad videos built a merch empire.
Maybe, secretly, you want that too.
Maybe you'd still keep your day job—but how sweet would it be if people loved your art, too?
If you're like me—struggling to figure out how to take your hobby more seriously and find the time to market it in this world where every creative platform is a social network—remember what you’ve already accomplished in other areas of life.
What else have you made happen?
What if you applied those skills to the hobby you love?
As Amie McNee says: The world needs your art.
But the world also needs you, rested.
Because if you burn out trying to do whatever it is you’re doing—building a business, turning a hobby into more, working out, surviving—you’ll never know what could have happened if you’d just taken it slower. Made it sustainable. Made it doable.
Publish the book when you're 70. Join climate activism when the kids leave. Journal 10 minutes a day. Make art once a month.
I’m stretched for time. I do what I can.
This matters to me. I make it work with what I have.
I am more than any algorithm can dictate.
Taking a break is not failure.
A pause is not failure.
An algorithm may forget.
But people?
They don’t.
From Vaani:
I started writing when I was young, in therapy. It was meant to help me process the harder things—grief, sadness, trauma. And it worked. Writing became a safe space where the pain had somewhere to go.
Over time, that writing evolved. Less diary, more fiction. More poems. More stories. I started telling stories not just to recount the truth, but to rewrite it—transform it. My imagination gave shape to emotions too big to hold.
It became a place entirely my own.
I’d daydream sometimes about becoming a famous writer, but it never felt like something that could actually happen. After all, how many people does that really happen for?
Then, like Camille, I had a friend who secretly read a story I’d written in my Notes app. She told me it was great. That moment didn’t send me chasing a writing career, but it stayed with me. It felt good to be seen—and seen well—especially by someone I cared about.
Slowly, I started writing poems and stories for other friends too. For birthdays, for celebrations, for the people I loved. I was that friend—the one who could put your feelings into words. And eventually, as the blog era took off, more people started telling me, “You should really do this.”
I tried, on and off, for years. But blogging didn’t stick. It didn’t bring the satisfaction I thought it would. Not enough views in enough time. Not enough comments or praise. Plus, there were always other things to focus on—school, friends, work. So I had these half-built blog homes scattered across the internet, little rooms I entered and then abandoned.
It wasn’t until I moved to Korea that something shifted. I wanted to document everything—the beauty, the chaos, the magic of living somewhere new. And I was older. External gratification was starting to mean less to me. I started blogging more seriously, for myself, and surprisingly. one article was really well received—that’s always how it goes, isn’t it?
That was the push I needed. Maybe I could write publicly. “On the side.” Maybe I could even get paid to do it.
I started pitching essays and stories to publications. And it was fun…until it wasn’t. The rejection emails started rolling in, and I was hit with the classic catch-22: you need experience to get published, but can’t get experience without being published. It was exhausting. How do new writers make it, truly?
Somewhere along the way, my life got happier too. And as I became less sad, I found I had less to write about. My brain had wired itself to treat writing as therapy—something I turned to only when hurting. And when I wasn’t hurting anymore, I felt… well, boring. Basic. What could I possibly have to say?
That, in tandem, with limited success for digital magazines, meant I tried less to get published online.
But I still had skill. I was always the go-to person when friends needed help editing something—essays, papers, applications.
It hit me one day that perhaps if I wasn’t coming up with “good” ideas, maybe I could help others share theirs. That’s when I started to explore editing seriously. I began picking up volunteer, and luckily, freelance editing gigs, and I really loved it. There’s something so satisfying about polishing a piece of writing and making it shine. I found pride in that.
For years, it was enough.
Until it wasn’t.
I started noticing a shift in how I related to my own writing. When the work became too focused on outcomes—money, ad conversions, SEO keywords, click rates, product links—it stopped feeling like mine. I wasn’t writing to connect. I was writing to get picked up by the algorithm. To show up on someone’s dashboard or inbox or affiliate roundup.
And even when I was good at it—even when the piece did well—something in me felt hollow. Like I had bartered away the part of writing that once felt sacred. I didn’t want to feel like a sellout, but it was hard to ignore the gap between the work I wanted to do and the work that paid.
And then, of course, not all of the writing I do is creative. A lot of it is technical—rooted in science, precision, clarity. It’s fulfilling in a different way. It satisfies the part of me that loves language as a tool for understanding.
But it doesn’t always feed the part of me that wants to be moved, or to move others. So I’ve had to learn how to hold both truths: that I can love my job and still long for creative expression. That not everything I write will light a fire in me—and that’s okay.
I realized I needed to reconnect with my own voice outside of my work. I needed to write again—not for publication, not for clients—but for myself.
And I started to.
Then, somehow, those editorial gigs led to writing gigs. One thing folded into the next, and before I knew it, I was writing again. But this time, it was mostly for platforms, clients, contracts. I had carved out a small space for myself in the freelance writing industry.
Those sporadic freelance writing and editing gigs—in travel, wellness, science, psychology, education, you name it, led to me to where I am today.
I’m super lucky right now to work in a “creative field”, working with other creators to put their work into the world. I’m constantly pouring myself into other people’s projects—editing, writing, brainstorming. Some months, I make time for my own creative work. Other months, I don’t. And I’ve stopped being hard on myself for that.
Because here’s the thing: I am being creative every day. Whether it’s through my editorial day job, my freelance writing, dancing, or just deep conversations with other creatives—I’m feeding the spark. It doesn’t always look like sitting down to write a poem, but it’s part of the same creative ethos.
There are seasons. There are ebbs and flows. I don’t live in a bubble—I live in a world with demands, distractions, and changing priorities. And I’m learning to honor that.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about navigating creativity long-term, it’s this: your creative life doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. You don’t need to write every day. You don’t need to go viral. You don’t need to monetize everything you make.
You can. But you don’t have to.
You just have to find a rhythm that’s yours. One that’s sustainable. One that lets you pay the bills and for a little bit more (whatever that means to you.) One that lets you rest. One that reminds you your creativity is not a currency—it’s a connection. To yourself. To others. To something bigger.
So if you're standing at the edge of your creative journey, wondering whether to leap, wondering what success might look like—know that it's okay to move slowly. To take breaks. To build quietly. To change your mind. To start over.
What matters is that you keep making space for your own voice. Whether it’s once a month or once a year. Whether it’s published or not. Whether it’s seen or not.
It matters because it’s yours.
And if you nurture it gently, it will stay.
From Us:
We didn’t arrive at creative work through straight lines or solid plans. For both of us, writing started quietly—alone in therapy rooms, inside Notes apps, tucked into journals no one read. It was a way to process, to survive, to make sense of the parts of life that didn’t make sense otherwise.
And somewhere along the way, we wondered if we could turn it into something more. Something people saw. Something people paid for. Something that counted.
We’ve both tried—at different times and in different ways—to make creativity our career. And in doing so, we’ve run into the same complicated questions:
How do you keep showing up to your creative life when the world only seems to value it once it’s monetized? How do you keep going when your imagination takes time, but the internet demands speed?
The answers haven’t come easy. But we’ve found some things to hold onto:
That creativity is still real even if it isn’t profitable.
That taking breaks is not the same as giving up.
That being creative every day doesn’t always look like making a masterpiece—sometimes, it looks like editing a friend’s paper, building someone else’s dream, or just imagining new possibilities in a conversation.
We’re both learning that a creative life isn’t always loud or visible. It doesn’t have to be optimized, monetized, or algorithm-friendly to be worthwhile. It just has to be yours. It has to be something you can keep returning to, again and again, without burning out, without selling out, and without losing the joy that made you start in the first place.
So if you’re in this too—trying to write, trying to create, trying to make meaning while also making a living—we hope you know this:
You're not alone.
And your creativity doesn’t have to be constant to be real.
It just has to be nurtured. Slowly. Sustainably. On your terms.