Creative freedom entails being able to create what one wants, how one wants to do it, and when. This is what henry david thoreau wanted. He liked writing and giving lectures. But when he started to gain traction and popularit that he needed to go to book tours, he felt that he was losing time from his walks. He felt the tension between popularity and freedom.
The irony is that one can only truly feel free if one has addressed one’s basic needs. I could, for example, imagine a hunter and gatherer who, after spending the entire morning looking for food and satisfying his need, decides to spend the entire day looking at the sky.
Work to provide for one’s sustenance needs is a given except for the few who have other people (or machines) doing it for them. An artist who doesn’t have any of these luxuries has to enter the Exchange economy in a regular basis to buy freedom to enter the Gift economy—that realm where things are given freely without expectations of a return. The life that I want to live is a life where I have made peace with the exchange economy in the right way—in a way that feels right (a passion and lifestyle business), freeing me up time gradually increasing, to use for entering the gift economy.