Do you have time for side projects?

The (usually imaginary-project-shaped) things you’d really rather be paid to be doing, but aren’t lucky enough to land as the actual work-day-gig? If you do them, let me ask: how do they make you feel?

I’m wondering as I’ve been picking away at them for years, in all sorts of creative guises (as art, illustration, sculpture, design) and I’m increasingly wondering if they’re of any help at all.

For me they’re a kind of hard-to-resist internal muse, kicking-off in my head, and they feel impossible to resist. After all, the impetus is to mark some kind of self improvement when I get stuck. People turn to all kinds of places for doing better (or unlocking, or unblocking), and usually cite external influences - even the archetypal Muse, of whichever religious persuasion, was invoked as an ‘other’ - but side projects always come from me, from someplace in me. I guess you could call them insidesights. 

They’re not really like hobbies (at least mine aren’t) as side-projects are more like mental solar flares, a brief burst of existential energy that builds up as a result of not being able to channel your skills at the office. Like a kind of safety-release valve, they can seem tremendously valuable. 

But they come with a price. Namely they can serve to amplify the issue that drives them - that this isn’t what you’re being paid to do. Followed by the next nagging thought. Because maybe you (me) aren’t really good at this game. Otherwise this would be what you’re doing, am I right?

You’re effectively driving yourself into mental sidings, and these rather (on reflection) futile attempts to recorrect that are a symptom that you’re treating, rather than the cause. The result is a feeling of growthlessness, a kind of physiological recession. Is there a fix for this? Or, as usually is the case, is this just overthinking things? Asking for a friend.