Pay the bills with bureaucratic work or drop everything and be happy doing only what you love? A question that never shuts up when we begin adult life and continues to scream throughout almost our entire professional career and can persist even into retirement. But the answer does not always come directly pointing to one option or another. Not everyone can choose to live solely on love, while the bills are screaming at the end of the month. What to do? This was also the dilemma experienced by the journalist, and now retired papilloscopist from the Civil Police, Carmen Palheta. This 52-year-old from Pará worked for decades as a public servant while her vocation as a writer and columnist called her every day. But the time spent on public employment duties did not allow her to go any further. In this episode no. 08 of A Case Apart, she shares the entire process with Noemia Colonna, and tells how she protected and exercised her creativity amid bureaucratic service for decades, managing to give vent to her writer side, full and beautiful at the height of her maturity, and later of his 50s.