99U: When it comes to talking about creative careers, no one likes to use the C-word: Compromise. Being the best, courting success, and living a personal fairytale are the narratives most commonly spun about what a flourishing professional life is all about. But what about creative people who have plum gigs that still don’t all their bills? What if you count the New York Times as a client, but put in two days a week at a café? What if you’re jetting off to Hong Kong, Osaka, and Tokyo for group shows, but come home to illustrating other people’s books? What if the work you really enjoy fills up your evenings and weekends, but you can count the hoots you give about the daily grind on one finger? We reckon that can constitute a fulfilling working life, too.
5 comments:
For any artist it can take time to get established. Even actors. Sometimes you have to end up working in a cafe in order to pay the bills while you tread the boards and hope to land the big broadway role. Many actors never make it out of the ensemble. Part of it is dedication and that other part? I wish I knew. For theatrical designers, it can be the same way. I have in my professional career, freelanced more than I’ve wanted to. Sometimes it was great fun, other times it was a daily struggle to make sure that bills got paid. I currently view my theatrical world as the same amount of work as before but more people trying to do it. In my worldview, I need to develop skills in college that will set me apart from the rest of the pack. When I graduate with my MFA, there will be others all over the country doing the same thing. They will be much younger in most cases than I am and we will all be competing for the same jobs. I know what I want to do out of college and will hopefully be able to do it for a long time. I don’t know if I will ever go back to freelance again. I am not sure that, at this stage in my life, I could financially make it work.
Compromises are apart of life they are day in and day out. A lot or people especially artists and self starters don't want to hear or think about this thought but it is. And getting out on your own as an artists is really hard to do. It doesn't come easy or without hard times and hard work at the beginning. For theatre its the same way we don't work in a profession where it feels like we can venture out into other careers fields or practices but every once in awhile we will need to in order to support ourselves and our career goals and aspirations. Taking up small part time or low priority jobs just to create revenue and keep the lights on can be just enough to keep a starving artists from well starving. It's something that I think is hard to acknowledge and even harder to do as we feel bored or out of place in these places but it can sometimes save ourselves from ourselves.
When I was considering being a designer I was thinking about how I was going to actually support myself. One of my advisers told me about her day to day career life as a free lance costume designer. She said that as one show enters tech, she's in initially creative meetings with a second show, and actively searching for a third show to start. That kind of life seems completely exhausting to me, and it's not something I'd ever like to do. I sympathize and understand those creative professionals that take day jobs in order to make enough money independently as to not get burned out. There's no shame in taking a day job, especially if the hours are kind and you get benefits. It's hard to admit to yourself that you can't support yourself from your passion, but I think de-stigmatizing day jobs is a good place to start.
This article gets really real about the compromises you have to make if you’re a starting out freelancer- or even a veteran freelancer. You’re going to have to take that boring job so you can sustain yourself as you work on what really brings your passions to life. I really liked what they said about the boring museum job- you can spend all day thinking of topics or ideas and then get home fired up about a new project. And there are more compromises to be had with getting a day job while freelancing than just not working full time on the work you’re passionate about- when the comfort of a stable income interferes with the pressure to get more clients or take all the jobs you could because the day job takes up time. It takes a degree of maturity to realize when your dream can’t be exactly as you had thought and you have to take a day job to sustain yourself. Learning how to be okay with it is key.
I really liked this article because it addresses my concerns when I decided to study theatre. I, and my parents, were scared about my job security and whether or not I would be able to make a living wage. This article really redefines what success and having a job really is. I feel like, as artists studying in a prestigious university, we often expect to get super big high paying jobs that are also creatively stimulating right after graduating. But it is important to remember that all of those people currently in those positions have had to work hard to be there. Choosing to do art for the rest of your life is a hard decision and there is not shame in picking up a more regular job so that you are freer to create what you want to create. That does not mean you are not successful and it does not mean that you are "selling out."
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