I'll live like a hack

I feel like a hack—is one who exploits his creative potential to come up with dull, repetitive, menial work, for money. I don’t get that much money, and may be my professional work isn’t so trite after all. But that doesn’t make me any less of a hack. I’ve come to realize that talent means next to nothing. See me, for example. Things I have been for a living: software professional, editor. Things I can be: film critic, copywriter, scriptwriter, travel writer, teacher, columnist, cricket commentator, and may be mechanical engineer. Except engineering and scriptwriting, I’m sure I can be on the job with immediate effect. So, what should I make of it? Nothing. I only need enough money to do what I want to do. But for the money, I have to do something that incidentally files my core, making it fit snugly like a dovetail joint. May be then, I should decide on how much of a hack I’m prepared to be and how much money would fill my pockets.

One evening, about a year and a half ago—one of those evenings when my professional life was in limbo, those days of joblessness yet sheer ebullience at having given expression to thoughts simple and deep, at having distilled life into words that carried me to the threshold of a magnificent portal, that dressed up in the wardrobe of ideas and looked askance for my approval like a child up to antics for a share of his mother’s attention—on one of such days, I remember listening to Baba O’Riley for the longest time ever. And while the piano and the violin were played for me, I discovered my mojo, as if saying, “If you can make something brilliant, so can I.” And I wrote this as a part of something else.

Life in its myriad forms came forth and claimed territory. Dominions were disrespected. Fat, croaking frogs laid siege to unseen corners of houses and paid no rent. Lazy creepy crawlies stood their ground. When poked, and asked to move out, they coiled with insouciance and pretended to nap. Gregarious crickets carried on noisy conversations with aplomb. Bees hummed, guiding their brethren towards teeming hives in fusty garages. Butterflies floated from petal to petal, like promiscuous bodies, drinking from many bowls. Colonies of ants marched along damp walls in a single file like medieval infantries. Bugs formed clubs and societies and congregated with needless regularity to discuss trivial issues. Spiders roamed about intrepidly with open mandibles. House lizards preyed walls and chomped careless flies like hungry horses chomping oats. Greedy-gutted caterpillars gorged on leafy branches.

Maybe I should just fuck the money. Let everyone else take my share, if ever there was anything for me. I could not, should not, care less. You go fuck your money and lead your fucking mediocre lives. I’ll live like a hack one half of each day, and go home to create something brilliant.