This is a rant that has been building up in my brain for awhile. It was brought on by my day job situation and a discussion with my mother (who is one of the most supportive people of my dreams that I will ever be fortunate enough to have in my life, by the way, so she’s not the target of this rant. But the discussion we had brought it on.)
For 4 years I was self-employed. I made crafts and art and sold them through an Etsy store. I worked hard at it, making new items, photographing them, writing listing texts and tags, promoting the store, networking, processing orders, and shipping items out. Around Christmas I was pulling in more money than my husband with my little on-line business, and he was working almost every day at a grocery store at the time. I put in long hours, working from almost the moment I got out of bed until the moment I would fall back in to it. But I was having such FUN. I loved my work, I loved my customers, I loved being able to be creative and have people give me money for things that I created.
In order for us to get back on our feet though, I had to get a day job. I found one, at the company I’m working at now and have been at for almost a year and a half. When I took the job, I knew I was going to be miserable, and I have been. Though it has taught me the discipline I need to get things done in my art job (which I consider to be my “first job” and the DJ is my “second job”) on time constraints and has taught me the value of setting deadlines. I’m more efficient now at getting things done for Adrastus than I ever have been, and I have my day job to thank for it. Plus it’s helped us pay the bills, and that’s always good too.
However, my dream is still now, and will always be, to get back to that point where I don’t need the day job. Where working on the comic, making merchandise, packing and shipping orders, and doing freelance jobs IS my income. It’s not that I don’t want to work, it’s that I want to do MY PASSION as a job. The way that I used to when I had my little on-line store and it was doing well.
And even though I’ve been close to walking out of my aggravating day job a million times now, I haven’t. Even though every synapse in my body is screaming at me to just ditch the place and jump back in to being self-employed again, more than just the uncertainty of being able to pay the bills is holding me back. See, the entire time I was self-employed, all I heard from a lot of people was this question:
“When are you going to get a REAL job?”
Which, by the way, is insulting as hell to ask someone who’s putting in 80 hour weeks most of the time doing something they love. To me, that WAS a real job. I was working my ass off for something I loved, and no one that I cared about was taking me seriously. This is something that I still fear even for when Adrastus, my art, and my writing ever does get to the point where I can live off of it. I don’t want to get rich, I just want to be able to devote my time to the thing that I love the most and that makes me feel ALIVE. Days that I can spend working on my art are heaven to me. I go to bed anticipating them like a kid anticipating Santa Claus. I get up at 4 in the morning to get ready for a job I don’t have to be at until 8 because I NEED to spend some time being creative before I slog off to my miserable day job. But since I want to tell stories and draw pictures and illustrate books, it’s not a REAL job that I want, and people think they should put me down for it.
And here’s the thing that really gets my goat. (Where the hell did that expression come from, anyway?) If I wanted to do anything ELSE, people would be saying how dedicated I was to my passion. If I was working as a waitress and trying to get in to acting, or theater, or singing, or ballet, or medical school, that would be fine. People would be falling all over themselves for me to achieve my dream. If I wanted to be a marine biologist more than anything in the world, everyone would think that was awesome. But I’m creative, and I love to tell stories and I want to be paid for that. But that’s not a “real job” so it’s silly and I should get serious and do something else.
I wouldn’t ask a doctor who’s passionate about saving people when they’re getting a “real job”. I wouldn’t ask a computer programmer who loves to write code when they’re going to get a “real job”. So why is that acceptable for people who want to work for themselves and be creative? Why is it not acceptable to be an artist? Or a writer? Is it because of the “penniless writer” and “starving artist” stereotypes that are built in to our society? Or do people really think that every other passion in the world is awesome and worthy of applauding, but writing and art are silly and those people who want to do it are goofing off?
Sure, there are days when I’m home and I don’t want to work. You know what I do then? I work on art or writing ANYWAY. Maybe I don’t do comic pages, but I do anatomy studies or something. Maybe I play with a new technique, or doodle ideas for merchandise. Do you want to know how dedicated I am to living out my dreams?
I keep a timesheet. For drawing comic pages and doing other creative work. No lie, it’s sitting right next to me now, and I’ll be logging this writing on to it for today because it’s work to me. When I open Manga Studio and start working on my pages for Shattered Myth Spotlight, I’ll log my hours spent on those too. I’ve been keeping these time sheets (another skill picked up from my day job) to not only prove that I am working, but to show myself just how much I can get done. People. I keep a written time sheet for this “pretend job” because that’s how dedicated I am to it.
So now, even though I really want to get rid of my lame day job, I’m terrified to. I’d be terrified to even if Adrastus was doing well and I was getting freelance work, because I don’t want the “real job” question any more. I don’t want people I care about to think I’m loafing around and free-loading off my husband because he’s going out of the house and working. That hurts, because I do work. No one may hand me a paycheck every two weeks if I’m a self-employed freelancer selling comic books and t-shirts and art prints, but it’s still work. And it’s a lot harder than any other “real” job I’ve ever had, because I sink or swim on my own merit and not on the merit of some company who doesn’t give a damn about me. I wasn’t just a cog in a machine that could be replaced with another cog at a moment’s whim, I WAS the machine! Well, I am the machine around here. And I intend to be the Head Cog, dammit, until I can’t do this any more. I’ve found what I’m truly passionate about, and I’m here to stay. “Real” job or not.
Am I the only one who’s gone through this? Please say no.
Have a great weekend!
