Jimmy Gilmore

My fist hit the table this morn­ing. I was feel­ing pas­sion­ate. Really pas­sion­ate about my work.

It’s an empow­er­ing thing – feel­ing so pas­sion­ate about what you do that you’re will­ing to sacrafice your hand. The one you use to write with, which is how you make your living.

My job doesn’t save lives and it’s good to keep it in per­spec­tive. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care deeply. It can have a pro­found impact on my client’s busi­ness and it also bares my cre­ative sig­na­ture. So I feel OK tak­ing it per­son­ally every now and then.

Every cre­ative per­son I know dreams about some­day walk­ing up to their client, their boss, their boss’ boss or who­ever took a giant squeeze on their work and squeeze back. But instead they take yoga classes or just nur­ture their ulcers. I keep pic­tures of my lit­tle ones next to my mon­i­tor to make sure I remem­ber what’s truly important.

In a cre­ative busi­ness there are always ene­mies of the work. But like in most wars, they don’t know they’re the enemy — they just see them­selves as act­ing in their own inter­ests. For them it’s not per­sonal so why the hell should I take it personal.

What I should really do is chan­nel that pas­sion back into the work. It can be ther­a­peu­tic to harass that anger and write with utter feroc­ity. In fact, I wrote a pretty fun bull­dozer cam­paign that way.