Make the money, don't let the money make you.

My mind has been at war with itself the past few days.  Well, not really war... but I've been reflecting quite a bit... trying to see things - my life - from a different perspective... under a different light.

I used to be a creative being.  I wrote music, poetry, drew, painted, sculpted - I was an artist.  In my heyday I played 8 different instruments proficiently.  One year I decided I was a film producer.  I filmed about a dozen shorts and wrote four feature length screen plays.  This was the same year I started blogging.  Not just silly memes and feel-good themes, but hard-core every-day blood and sweat blogging.  Real stuff.

Then one day it stopped. 

I want it back.

I was listening to some hip-hop on the way to work this morning and a lyric really stuck with me.  "Make the money, don't let the money make you".  I'm not impressed with who I've become in my career.  I look in the mirror and the real me is so, so distant behind my eyes.  I can barely recognize myself - I certainly don't like who it is I see on the surface.

The good news is, I'm realizing this now... before I get any more gnarled and twisted and corrupted by the system I'm not only participating in, but perpetuating.  This job started as a way to pay the bills.  I'm seeing now that the costs of this job will always be greater than it's potential to reciprocate. 

I need to start living differently.

I need to start living, full stop.