torn

I'm very torn between two sets of values:

I want to get a lame-ass day job that I don't care about to pay my bills and generally take care of my needs, so I can work on my more creative stuff freely. However, this seems to cause me to pick jobs that i don't care about very much, so that I can slack off while I'm there, to save energy for my creative work, which I believe is deeply important. However, I also believe that if you are hired to do a job, you should try to do well, because you affect so many people around you. If you dont' do your work well, if affects customers, co-workers, etc. If you do the best possible job you can, even if it's not what you truly love and feel you need to do, you can provide an valuable contribution to the world. For many people, this is all they need to do.

For me, it isn't. I have to be doing something extraordinary, as a friend put it. But doing something extraordinary does not pay. How can I give my all to two pursuits? Jesus said that a man cannot serve two masters. The job I have right now is very conducive to my creative pursuits - I can slack off much of the day, and have a lot of energy to work at night. But the work itself is so boring, and I do it so badly, that I feel I'm not doing anybody any good by being there. I figure someone is going to eventually yell at me for surfing the internet, or doing sloppy work, and I'll feel awful. I do NOT like to fail.

So I'm starting a new job, but who knows what kind of path it will take me down? I'll have to learn the ropes, and that means energy and concentration, energy taken away from my more "important" pursuits. Also I get this creepy Republican vibe from the people I work with, and I gotta say, I really hate working with conservatives. I mean, they often run an efficient workplace (my current job seems to employ a lot of liberal academic types, which I enjoy, but it's soooo frustratingly inefficient). The last time I worked with people like that, who made racist or sexist jokes, I felt so uncomfortable that I wanted to quit every morning.

Oh well. If I don't like it I can quit. I wish I had enough money saved that I could say that in bold or italics.