Moonlighting
An exercise in knowing one's self
In the flurry of thinking just how could I start this venture off, I become enamored with the concept of moonlighting.
As with anything in life, the stress of the first post, first poem, first song seems to be fraught with anxiety; which are ultimately reflections of the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves. After all, as our minds will tell us, are we really writers, songwriters, photographers. This juxtaposition of “who am I to do this” and “I want to do this because I enjoy to do this” seems like a topic good enough as any to begin this Substack.
In reflecting on what it means to begin anew, particularly to begin anew in front of an audience, it dawned on me that the friction stems from an incompatibility with who you think you are. This realization is what led me to think of what it means to be moonlighting. In many ways, we are all moonlighting in some capacity and I believe that there are two powerful components to this:
Giving yourself permission to moonlight when it empowers you
Knowing who you are and knowing how you are moonlighting
I’ve used the word enough times, I imagine it would be helpful to give a casual definition of how I am approaching this. Moonlighting is simply the act of pretending to be something that you do not believe you are or something that may be different from your core identity. We have all heard this in conversations such as “I was an actor moonlighting as a writer” but it extends so much further than occupations.
As a fledgling 30’something, I often find myself wondering which version of me is truth and which versions of me have I constructed to participate in the world in an easier manner. The danger in moonlighting in this way is that if you allow yourself to do it for so long that you become incredibly good at the act you are putting on; you become susceptible to believing it yourself. To be put simply, we all have to exist on this planet and that entails paying rent, finding housing and a litany of other tasks of the mundane. But when you are moonlighting as an “adult” for so long, you quickly can become entrapped by your race to adulthood that you lose the humanity that lay in your creative soul.
When I began to think of who I am and who I am moonlighting as, I realized that I have been approaching the dichotomy in the wrong way. I became to think of myself as a worker who also created on the side, as an adult who spent their weekends writing or making music. But rather the truth is that at my core I am those things, I am moonlighting as the professional worker; I am not moonlighting as a creative.
With this in mind, it enabled me to wonder if I could moonlight in a positive capacity. Which leads us to this blog, my attempt at moonlighting as a writer. In this version, the more I write the more likely I am to become to believe that I am in fact a writer. There is an inherent power in this; it removes all pretenses, all dogmatic minutiae and empowers you to be free.
So I leave you all to wonder, who are you moonlighting as that is harming you, who are you moonlighting as that empowers you?
Who are you and who are you pretending to be?