Creative Outlet or Waste of Time?

I'm not going to grow up anytime soon

So, while waiting in the car for my family at The Y today, I decided to play around with instagr.am (an app that was brought to my attention by Everett Bogue) and some other free doodle/glow/neon picture app that I found. I ended up I was playing with it for an hour!

Disgruntled at The Y

Nebberz is always giving me shit for spending too much time on pictures... and, yeah, I probably do. I have this disorder where I have to do things really, really thoroughly.  Alright, I don't know if it's a disorder, but it seems like it sometimes. I just can't seem to half-ass things. Sometimes I can do things to about 80% doneness, but still I don't feel good about it. And if for some reason I do anything less than 80%, it just grates against my soul (which is why I need to quit my job...).

A penis and pot leaves = Classy

So in that hour of fooling with iPod apps and pictures, I only made 4 pictures. What? Why did it take so long?? This seems to always happen when I'm doing pictures. Thank the stars I haven't fooled with Photoshop or any serious imaging software -- my life would be sucked out of me by the computer.

Screw the kids - I'm fucking around on Photoshop! <3

But, at the same time, I would love it. I know I would. I don't pretend to be good at it (just because I like to give 110%, that doesn't mean I'm actually good at it!), but it's so much fun to me. And it's so much fun to a lot of people, which is why the market is saturated with photographers and image editors and stuff.

But here is the question I would like to pose:

What makes the use of time "worth it"?

Nebberz is an avid chess player and gamer in general. Sometimes he feels like he's wasting his time playing games, and he should be doing something less expensive/more profitable (or whatever his "purpose" in life is (if our lives indeed have a purpose) -- and could his purpose really be playing games?).  I reassure him that - bottom line - as long as it's making you happy overall, it's worth it. So, he keeps playing. Maybe someday he'll be a Grandmaster in chess because he practices and enjoys it so much. That would be awesome.

I have a hard time using the same logic on myself, though.

I have some pretty hardcore Mommy Senses which tingle (we unschool our two kids), and it turns out that I am also a bit of a neat freak. Strange... I thought everybody's home was spotless! That seems to not be so, and apparently I have a higher thresshold for what constitutes a clean house than most other people (not that my house is clean, it's just stressing me out all the time because I can't keep up with it as much as I would like). Maybe it's some retarded Housewife Senses that have been societally imprinted into my psyche, even though I try to avoid doing things just because it's what everybody else thinks that the type of person I am is supposed to do.

The Mommy and Housewife Senses tingling 24/7 kinda give me the feeling that I should put my passions on hold because I have duties to attend to. I mean, just imagine Peter Parker doing doing double duty as both Spiderman and Aquaman, but he decides he's just going to fuck around all day on Photoshop instead of saving the world? (Especially the people he loves.)

And that raises the question: Should I really be comparing myself to superheroes? Isn't that one of the reasons why women are so crazy? Will my family/house not be fine/better off if I stop answering to their every beck and call?  Maybe fucking around on Photoshop all day would teach my kids to give 110% effort working on things that they love - although my ego would love to feel immense guilt:  My family deserves that 110%.  Not to mention the probability of earning a living or getting recognition for time spent fucking around in Photoshop is relatively minuscule.

What about you?

Do you spend a considerable amount of time doing something you like with little or nothing to show for it? Do you feel like it's a waste of time? What do you think is required for something to be "worth doing"?