As part of Kiki’s Delivery Service Novel Week, freelance editor, writer and Kiki fan Carly Smith shares how the film touches upon an aspect most have felt before…
I may not have magic, and I may not have a broom to fly on, but Kiki and I both know what it’s like to start hating your passion.
Unlike a lot of people now approaching their thirties, I didn’t grow up with Kiki’s Delivery Service. The animated movie adaptation we’re all familiar with released in the US and Canada in 1998, but I didn’t see it for another ten years later as a high schooler, and it wasn’t until I watched it again as a young adult that I saw it as more than just a coming of age story. I saw more than a young girl making it on her own in a new city; I saw a creative person losing her passion for her craft once it became her job.
I’ve been writing fiction and nonfiction for most of my life, and I’ve bounced between journalism and publishing, but no matter where my journey takes me, I always find myself revisiting my identity as a writer. After college, I started writing about video games, one of my passions, and even got a paying job doing it. Then I pivoted to publishing and decided I wanted to be an editor, particularly for a niche of books I loved — manga and light novels. After coming to a decision that I agonized over, I stepped back from that passion as well.
As Kiki says, “Flying used to be fun until I started doing it for a living.”
At the start of her journey, we see Kiki happily flying around, searching for a new home and a place to start anew. It reminds me a lot of how I felt going to a college far away from my family and friends from home. I was giddy but also a bit nervous, much like Kiki, with butterflies in my stomach. Our favorite young witch does find a place to stay and quickly figures out upon buying pots and pans that simply living is expensive. Therefore, she has to find a way to make money, and she decides she can earn a living while doing what she loves.
Kiki’s like a lot of young artists, writers, and creatives: We’re overworked. We have a poor balance between work and our personal lives — something that employers also take advantage of in creative industries from book publishing to comics to video games. We feel lonely when we don’t have mentors or others to learn from, or we feel frustrated when we start stagnating. And while Kiki isn’t in a flooded job market like the rest of us, we all are trying to figure out what our “special skill” is, as the first witch she meets outside of her hometown asks her. Kiki says her only real skill is flying, so she wants to do deliveries.
Kiki’s Delivery Service treats flying, painting, and baking all as creative industries. All three women we see who partake in these make money off of their hobbies and skills. Ursula, the painter Kiki meets, even tells the young witch that she thinks painting and magic are similar; they require a power within. They require inspiration.
But what do you do when your work drains your energy? What about when your passion in your industry fades away?
For Kiki, she loses the ability to fly, and therefore she loses the source of her income as well as her ability to communicate with Jiji, her cat familiar, who represents her connection to magic — her passion and creativity — and is left feeling lonely. She associates flying with work, because even when your work is in a field you love, at the end of the day it’s still work. I may not have magic, but my burnout is an ongoing problem I struggle with, and it’s left me in a drought of creative energy, unable to write. Even when I address the individual problems (the culture where I worked, the oppressive demand for higher productivity), it’s not until I take a real break that I’m able to breathe in deeply and create colorful worlds.
The worst part about burnout for me and Kiki is that it feels like a personal failure. When seniors in creative fields have implied to me that I should simply be happy to have a job in a field I love, they’ve missed the point, and they’ve made me feel like I just wasn’t tough enough to last in the industry. Somehow it’s my fault that I was frustrated that I felt underpaid and underappreciated. “Something must be wrong with me,” both Kiki and I have said. When our sense of selves are tied to our work, every work problem feels like a personal one.
I had to take Ursula’s advice: “Stop trying. Take long walks. Look at scenery. Doze off at noon. Don’t even think about flying. And then, pretty soon, you’ll be flying again.”
So I did just that. I caught up on sleep, walked around my neighborhood every day, and got back to reading for pleasure — something that I had actually stopped having the energy for while I was working so often. Eventually, I did dip my toes back into the field, but I was able to do that with a breath of both metaphorical and literal fresh air. A year later, I was back to writing a novel and finding writing fun, despite the labor it entails.
Thanks to Ursula’s encouragement, Kiki feels empowered to take time off for herself, learning the importance of vacation and how it allows her to come back to work with renewed spirit. Both relaxing in nature and receiving a cake from Madame, a previous client she went out of her way to aid, helps Kiki return to work with good mental health and an appreciation for the world and people around her.
Kiki’s passion flares up when a friend is in danger and she must fly to save him. If she hadn’t taken the time to rest, she likely would have struggled far more to use her magic when it was needed most. Afterward, the townspeople learn to value her talent, and along with her reconnection to Jiji, she no longer feels isolated. Now that she’s connected to her neighborhood and has a plan for where to go when she needs a break, Kiki can get back to making deliveries with a newfound value of her labor. She’s expanded her sense of self and experiences beyond her job.
Because at the end of the day, we are more than our work, even if we do love our work.
Carly Smith is a freelance editor and writer with two cats, one of whom she wanted name Jiji. She cosplays in her spare time and streams Nintendo games. Visit her website at carlysmith.net