The Money Talk

For this week's reflection on balancing working full time with my art, I'm going to talk about money.

Today, I overheard a coworker talking about an art class she's taking where they're working on an assignment building out budgets to help them prepare for a life of poverty.

Pragmatic? Yes. A huge bummer? Also yes.

I've based a lot of my life decisions off of that same pragmatism. I've tried to find the balance between working hard enough to build a skill in something that would help me to not deal with poverty, but also something that doesn't require most of my creative energy.

I purposely eschewed jobs related to writing because I knew that I would only get frustrated I was spending so much time NOT working on my own writing.

I once went back to school to become an English teacher because I figured summer break would be a great way of getting a lot of writing done, even if I was certain the rest of the year would likely be emotionally draining enough I wouldn't get much done. Then covid hit and I realized being a teacher was probably a bad idea - but that's another story.

My entire adult career, I have made all of my decisions filtered through the lens of how much it will impact my writing. I've tried to be smart about it all, and you know what?

I regret not being more brave when I was younger and betting on myself and my writing, rather than committing so much time toward a career that was always a plan B. I'm betting a number of you feel similarly.

But, we all make choices that put us on a road, and even if I'm not in a place where I can afford to step back and take more of a chance on me, I've been working towards a day when that can potentially be an option again.

So yes, it's depressing that we are teaching our young artists to expect poverty, but we have to play the hand we are dealt. There are still strategies and ways we can push for time for our art. Yes, it gets tiring, working to make rent, only to then push yourself to spend so much of your free time working on your art.

But what are you going to do? Give up on your art? Nah. I'd rather be a failure than a quitter. Plus, I 100% believe that I'd have a harder time at work if I wasn't keeping my well full with the writing projects I'm excited about.

So keep working on your art, keep narrowly avoiding bankruptcy, and keep the faith. Your art makes the world a better place just through the act of creating it. And if that's not a leap of faith, I don't know what is.