A couple weeks ago a friend of mine-let's call them Mary-came to me with a question. Mary knew I was recently retired and working on my writing career. She also knew that my husband was a long-term creative and that we had spent decades trying to balance the demands of my day job with our creative careers and the business side of our creative lives while still maintaining our personal relationship.
It's a struggle we all face: How do we balance the creative, the personal, and the professional?
A full-time creative, Mary was trying to figure out how to interact with a partner (let's call him Charlie) who was considering retirement - and who had offered to become her business manager.
Wow! Is that a situation ripe with possibilities. And I don't mean good ones. I mean disasters of epic proportions. The kind that shake the pillars of the earth; or at least your earth.
Yes, that’s my husband. He helps with a lot of things (including taking photos like this selfie) but there’s a reason he has a warning sign!
I asked, as gently as I possibly could, why did Charlie make this offer? Did he have management experience? Or publishing background? Did he know anything about running a business, or about this specific endeavor?
The answer (I bet you can guess) was no. Oh, Charlie was smart, and had held a responsible, upper-level job in his own field for many years. Charlie assured Mary he could pick this up in no time. Mary, for her part, had faith in Charlie, but she hesitated. Publishing, her chosen creative outlet, was a complicated and capricious business. It was changing rapidly, and there were a lot of hidden pitfalls, even for seasoned professionals.
But even if Charlie didn't flounder in the unfamiliar waters, she asked, what other issues might arise? What things, good or bad, hadn't she thought of? What might the change mean for their relationship?
No one issues building permits for relationships. You’re on your own, so be sure you’re building things the way you want them!
And those were just the first questions Mary thought of!
We discussed the issue for some time, and I pointed out several things that needed to be answered before Mary could tell if Charlie's idea was a good one or not. They are the questions we all have to ask ourselves as we navigate the unfamiliar waters of retirement and creativity.
Creativity takes many forms, as I have said before. In addition, each creative has different goals for their particular form.
Let's use writers as an example since it's one I'm familiar.
Each one chooses writing for a personal reason. Some write for a living, some for fame and glory, some to further another career, or as an adjunct to their primary career. For some it's "just for fun," including those that lock their manuscripts away and never show them to another living soul.
Each writer has a different goal, a different reason they choose writing as their creative outlet, and how they approach their writing will depend on what their goal is.
You need to know the answer to those two questions before you can begin to decide whether you want to involve your partner in your creative pursuit. You may be a hide-your-story-in-a-drawer writer, and not only don't you want help with your business, you don't even want a business. If that's you then you don't need to consider any further.
You can hide your creations away if you wish.
Do you want an income but want full control of your business? You better prepare yourself to gracefully decline the offer, or practice biting your tongue. A lot.
Do you want to enhance another outlet, like writing articles to share your passion for needlework, or photography? That's another model, and maybe control of the writing isn't important, but control of the photography is.
And if you do want help with the business management, but your partner/sibling/child just isn't qualified to do what you need done? Then you have to decide what you're willing to teach them and what you're willing to overlook in order to accept their offer of help.
Two last things to consider:
First, are you willing to have someone else involved with your creative endeavor? Because if you accept the offer of assistance you are inviting that person into your creative world, and giving them a voice in how you conduct your business and your creative life. How will you handle it when your "helpful" partner tells you gritty noir mysteries are the current best-selling genre, and you should switch over from the sweet romance stories or the sweeping fantasy epics that you love? Even if that is good business advice (and I don't believe for a minute that it is), are you willing to have that discussion, to have someone else telling you how to direct your creativity?
“No, dear. I do not want you to read my manuscripts.”
Second, please keep in mind - whatever choice you make - that the offer is made out of love, out of a desire to help, and as a way of spending time with you working on the thing you love. It springs from a desire to be a part of your life, to try to share the thing you love with you and be a part of something that is so important to you.
I am not inside your relationship. I don't know what the dymanic is between you and your partner. But recognize that accepting an offer of help, however well-intentioned, is ceding some level of control to another person, and ask yourself if you are really willing to do that. "No" is always an option.
To go back to what I said at the beginning, there are a lot of ways this can go pear-shaped, and not many that go right. Make your decision with your eyes open; plan for the worst, even if you hope for the best. My advice is to say no as gracefully as possible.
Your life, and that of your partner, is changing as you transition from your "day job" to retirement. They are trying to navigate that change along with you and find the new paradigm that will give you both happiness and satisfaction for the rest of your lives.
Treat them and yourself gently. Change is hard, and scary, but you're in this together.