“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The Protestant work ethics lack exuberance. The men who have succeeded within it, the inventors for example, never really fit within its confines. To a certain extent, of course, the impetus in an industrial society is upon throwaway achievement and mass-produced goods. A certain amount of time spent assembling a certain product, performing the same motions over and over on an assembly line, will at the end of a certain period give you a certain number of assembled items. Creativity is the one thing not needed, for the products are to be put together in a fairly regimented fashion.

In a manner of speaking, and in the terms of this discussion, you adapted the methods of the Protestant work ethics to your creative endeavors. Lest people decide that you were lax or lazy or irresponsible, you were determined to show that you not only worked as hard as they did, but harder. They might have vacations, but not you. They might quit at five, but not you. I am speaking here of you both. To some degree, you squeezed your exuberance into a tight fit, and tried to make a creative productivity regulate itself, to fit the industrial time clock: so many hours bringing a feeling of virtue, even if the attitude itself cut down on the exuberance of inspiration.

Creativity has its own ebbs and flows. It uses time, but is not used by it. It is not regular as clockwork. It takes time to paint or write, but the great inspirations of painting and writing transcend time, and the feeling of freedom and exuberance can give you in a few hours creative inspirations that have nothing to do with the time involved.