“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Inspiration and creativity he felt he could trust, but never felt he could trust his working capacity in the way he thought of work. At the same time other activities became taboo as not-work, so it was “wrong” to putter about the house in his work hours, and equally wrong to work after hours, when people who worked should be free.

A note: in creativity play and work are invisibly entwined. In your society however work often implies something you have to do, a chore that must be performed for monetary reasons. With Ruburt the play-work elements that had once been together became separated; from play-work to work-play, and occasionally the combination simply became work.

Ruburt’s normal “work periods” would often involve nonconventional hours, however, precisely because they were nonconventional. Each morning he felt it his duty to get up at a decent hour to go to work. At the same time artistic work had other connotations. [...] If you went out in the day people knew you were not working. [...] Otherwise he would want to do them and not work.

All of his ideas of responsibility became attached to the word “work.” In the past as given, he wanted to prove to you that he was working at home while you worked outside. Later when money became involved, then for a while fun writing had to come after working hours.

Work means conforming to Ruburt. Work meant working hours like other people have. [...] Their work was done while you and Ruburt were still busy.

Each day became a battle to turn play into work, structure it, and make it personally and socially acceptable. Yet creativity kept escaping the work definition—in my books, Seven and Sumari; and he even felt guilty about Sumari poetry in work hours, for it might not fulfill work’s requirements, produce money and so forth.

He worked an hour. [...] He took a shower instead of going directly to work, put food in the oven, worked another ½ hour, and yet found himself by dinner time with nearly ten pages of new material.

Sometimes after a full writing day, without too much actual creative production, he would do his best work in his free time after supper, when he did not have to work. So then he thought “I will schedule those hours into my writing day,” and suddenly they became prosaic, and often lost their magic because then they became his working hours.

He chose writing initially because of the spontaneity it offered, but his ideas of work directly conflicted with this. [...] Someone who worked had to keep at the job. [...] Someone who worked had to inhibit such impulses.

[...] Your whole concept of work time brings about limitations also. You personally do not think of the dream state as work time, and therefore inhibit very definite inspirations. I want you then to also examine your ideas about work and creative activity.