I’m a writer.

That is a bold statement to make when people ask me what I do for a living. They get embarrassed for me. I explain: no, not journalist; writer, like Binyavanga. Who? I tell them that I do creative writing and also freelance as a writer of nonfiction. It is the later than has so far been paying the bills. As yet creative writing does not pay for my rent, it does not pay any bills. That is not to say that it will always be that way. I received my first pay check a year ago, KES 12000 for four poems that I spent less than an hour on (do not try that at home). Well, the downside is that it took them months to pay me.

I was recently offered a job with a salary of KES 35,000. I turned it down because it would distract me from what I really want to do. That is a crazy thing to do in this economy, where people with my qualifications will agree to take unpaid internships just so that they can work and someday hope to be employed. 35k a month is enough to make sure I do not default on my student loans, buy the occasional mug of coffee at an expensive restaurant for a girl I am trying to impress, maybe buy shares at the next hyped IPO. It is certainly better than writing short stories and poems for journals whose first submission guideline reads: for now we do not pay contributors. But I need to take risks like that in pursuit of that lifelong ideal. Write for no pay. We certainly need more men and women who do what they do not out of financial necessity but out of the need to find their purpose. Stop me when I start to sound more like Joel Osteen.

My friends have advised me to take a job in a bank or do sales for one of those companies selling a vague product that no one wants to buy; anything that will pay the bills. They claim I attach a certain idealistic – immature? – romance to the picture of a ‘struggling artist’. That I need to grow up, life is a little more complicated than pursuing a lifelong goal. It is about buying shambas in Turkana and watching the stock market. But I am interested in the long run effects of taking up any job that will pay the bills as opposed to working towards a career, something that you will be doing when you are way past the age of retirement.

Sure, I will get employed, sign a contract for the next two or three years, earn enough in that period to barely break even. Move on to the next job. When does it stop? When does the realization that I have particular goals I want to achieve dawn on me? Perhaps when I’m 35, half-way through clearing my student loans, paying alimony, living in an expensive two-bedroom apartment, and holding to another job hoping my employer will renew my contract. I understand most people have responsibilities that go beyond their personal needs. They do not have the time to wait for a breakthrough that might never happen. They would rather take the job that assures them of a monthly pay check. Is that the safest philosophy? At some point I will be 65 and want to use my life savings to purchase a Harley-Davidson and move in with the bohemian kids next door because I just realized life is too short.

By now you have an idea of the disdain I have towards doing any job because it will pay the bills. What I am proposing is more of a question that it is an answer. What would you be if you were not a banker/accountant/doctor/lawyer? Would you be playing the cello at the Nairobi Philharmonic, or suspended upside down on a tall building commissioned to create installation art? I’m not asking you to quit your job as the regional sales manager for ABC so that you can have more time to work on those sonnets you have always been meaning to finish.

I should say here that it is mostly lawyers who want to be something else. I know three who are really good writers. One of them quit her job to start a literary agency and she is a source of great inspiration for me. They may not be earning as much, but they are happy. Happiness is for novices, you say. I say happy makes a better person, more willing to work.

Some of you will argue that I should shut up and take the 35k job, take that girl out for coffee, and do what I really like to do – write – as a side hustle. That’s exactly the kind of thinking that has turned the economy into a circus made up of middle-aged citizens who wish they could be somewhere other than where they are. I’m certain that people who stick to the things they really want to do make the best out of their lives. A few months ago I spent a night at a writer’s home in Karen. Yes, I said Karen. He writes fiction and creative non-fiction. He stuck to what he wanted to do. He put all his efforts into it and now he can afford to sit on a patio all day waiting for his muse.