In the beginning were the words, and the words were not promising as a career. The problem was, the words were almost all I had. That and a father who saw me as unfit to work with other people.

I worked for what the beloved father called “people” for about four years. The day I came home and said I couldn’t be doing with offices and humans and rules, he gave me an I-told-you-so smile for the ages. He was a gloating man.

So I started working for myself, and through times of lean and of plenty, that’s where I’ve been.

I once made the mistake of talking to a friend about “the hustle and the grind” of it all. That phrase did her in. She was helpless with laughter and said I sounded like an old West Indian book. Like something Selvon might have written for the exhausted, marginalised characters in his novels of migration, like The Lonely Londoners.

Actually, if you work in a creative field, it’s not difficult to see the parallels between the work you do and the work of someone selling nuts on the highway because that feels like the only option.

The hustle-and-grind conversation happened at a pop-up market where there were jewellers, painters, woodworkers and bakers. People selling handmade soaps, handmade oils, handmade bowls. If you could make it by hand, it was there. Everywhere there was art or artistry well within our sight.

These are tremendously brave people. They’ve struck out on their own, made their things and say to the world, “Here we are, world, come and get it.” They will answer to themselves and make their own rules, but they also stand all the risk and have nothing so secure as a salary. There are creative people who have salaries. They work in communications, marketing, event planning, branding, and advertising. They work at newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations. They may work on social media content for a supermarket.

None of these sound like fairytale jobs. People often equate artists and artisans with a sort of enchanted world where the work is so whimsical, so magical, it must not be much like work at all.

That is nonsense. Whether we are talking about the work of the person making knitted kittens or the work of trying to design a logo for an unmanageable client, this is hard. Working with your imagination does not mean you shut off the rest of your brain. You still have bills to pay and costs to cover. And you must knit some kittens.

I think all work can be creative. I think all work, treated a certain way, can be a kind of art. I know electricians who have elevated their skills and problem-solving to a kind of poetry. I know accountants who work endlessly and with such passion, it’s like watching a painter when she’s just figured out how to move the vision from brain to canvas.

I’ve lined up work-that-does-not-appear-to-be-creative next to work-that-is-supposed-to-be-creative because I don’t really see a difference. It all takes something out of us. And what we pour into it is supposed to buy groceries and keep the internet running.

Work good. No work bad. Better to ha