How to Live Creatively
(Spoilers, it's Privilege)
I think I might have cracked the code on how to retain your creative life in the face of American capitalism.
However, it will require very specific privileges to obtain.
I’m sorry to say there isn’t one blanket answer on how to balance a comfortable life with an artistic one in this hellscape society. All I can say is that it is possible. It can be much easier or much harder than it has been for me. However, here is a formula I’ve created to guide you to that life.
To the best of your ability depending on your circumstances:
Ensure your stability
Let go of preconceived notions of success
Find your people
Explore
Ensuring Stability
I put myself and my family into thousands of dollars of debt to go to a public university to study filmmaking. And I was lucky my family was poor enough to qualify for the financial aid that would plague us for the rest of our lives. I knew a lot of folks within that program who wanted to be there but couldn’t get the aid.
College isn’t necessary to lead a creative life but I will say it did so much for me. Going from a rural community with little to no arts funding to a university with people from different walks of life was a game changer. I found solidarity in other poor kids. I found examples of behavior and aspirations in kids who came from middle to upper-class families. I learned more than academics. I learned it was pretty strange that I never had sushi before. I learned most people had been overseas and would look down on you for being uncultured if you didn’t.
Class and social lessons aside, I was also exposed to a wealth of artistic endeavors I never knew existed. I was used to school plays and English class prose. In college, I was exposed to avant-garde theater, experimental film, beatnik literature, and modern art. I don’t mean to be corny but my mind was expanded. No amount of debt can make me regret the awakening to the world as an 18-year-old cultural recluse.
There are a lot of people who couldn’t make it past that first hurdle and still live in that self-reflecting community. Some have deliberately chosen to stay there, door shut, heels dug into the world they know. They mock the strangeness of cities and those crazy blue-haired artists behind a closed door.
I think about who I might be if I was locked behind that door with them. I think about the kids who are still locked behind that door.
The rural countryside can be beautiful and comforting but it can also be dangerous and a prison to people like me. Queer daydreamers.
I spent my entire 20s after college fighting for my creative life. I was lucky to find jobs related to my field of study pretty early due to some connections I made in college. But they didn’t pay well and I felt like gnawing my arm off pretty consistently.
I found my pockets of creative time in D&D and video games but I was still starving for it. I didn’t have the energy to write or draw after a full 8 hours of being belittled. I didn’t have the money to film a short or build something out of clay living off of slightly above minimum wage. I didn’t have the time to commit to see a community play let alone participate in one.
So I fucking quit. And I quit the next job that didn’t make me feel good. And the next. I was hoping I’d find something that would stick that wouldn’t make me want to swallow bleach.
Please note that I’ve been with my partner since college. We’ve been living a double-income life for years and that is the only way I was able to quit my job and look for another. It was the only way my partner could quit their job and look for another. It is a privilege to share an income with someone you can trust and build a financial life with.
Also, I never had kids. Lucky for me, I have PCOS and it’s very unlikely for me to have kids. I also had access to long-term birth control from my parent’s health insurance. We had no pregnancy scares, which is ideal in a country hell-bent on banning abortion.
For me, my 20s were the hardest part of my life so far. I’m sure some devastating developments are coming down the pike but at the very least I’m not dealing with them while living in a dingy apartment with $4 in my bank account.
I tell younger people that your 20s are meant to be an exploration of your identity. They’re meant to be trial and error and they’re meant to be building blocks, not the whole house.
That feels disingenuous these days.
So many people are working their asses off just to survive in this country way into their 40s, 50s, 60s. What an ass I would be to claim that the 20s are the only time you have to deal with the bullshit of survival.
The fact that I could wiggle my way past a barricade so many people have not is nothing but a privilege and a little bit of luck. I’m not working harder than anyone else.
Letting go of preconceived notions of success
The paradigm shift in my career in a “creative” field came from seeing a Facebook post about a job opening for a Warner Bros movie coming to my city. To be fair to myself, I had networked and connected with folks enough to be able to see the post in the first place. But what if I had opened a different app at that moment? What if I closed it before I scrolled to that post?
I would have never been hired onto a major studio movie set as a production assistant. I would never have been promoted to a producer's assistant. I would have never met titans in the fields of writing, directing, costuming, arts, props, and so much else. I wouldn’t be presented with opportunities and connections.
I also would have never later known what it felt like to work a 20-hour day. I would never have been made to drive 4 hours to simply hand someone rich snob a coffee. I would have never seen burnout drive crew to heart attacks and suicide. I would have never relapsed on my self-harm.
Working on movies was the best and worst thing to have ever happened to me. It was all I ever wanted as a kid. It was my religion. I wouldn’t give up working on some of them for anything. Others, I wish I never would have applied for. That’s the dice you roll when you’re a grunt on any movie. Is this going to be a fulfilling experience and will I feel like I’m a part of something bigger? Or will I be treated like trash and reminded that hundreds of people would be happy to take my job?
I decided I wasn’t going to pursue working in film full-time to preserve my mental health. Given my absolute devotion to the industry since the age of 10, it was the hardest decision I’ve ever made. I felt like I was giving up on the dreams of my younger self. I was stopping before I ever had a chance to move up the ladder. I was weak when I swore I’d fight through anything to get where I wanted to be.
Fuck that though. I want to be happy now.
I walked away from working in movies with a shit ton of experience and a stellar resume. Anyone would be dazzled to see Netflix in the previous employer's section, right?
I needed a job and saw one for a global nonprofit. I was hired and I fell head over heels in love. I was doing work to help the environment rather than make any one person rich. And I was damn good at it too. Turns out that working as a grunt on a movie set is like boot camp for grunt work at normal, 9-5 jobs.
All of a sudden, I was paid well, I had health insurance, and I could work from home, at a coffee shop, or while traveling. And I had all this free time now. Comfortable free time. Any poor person will know that sometimes free time is saved for agonizing over bills and general lethargy.
Was I working in an artistic field? No. But I was still happy. And now I had time. And energy. And stability.
Finding my people
In college, I was massively into improv comedy. I was on two troupes and ran one of them. It was like my second major. It was my main source of community, creativity, and friendship.
Flash forward six years and one of my friends from college improv was posting on Facebook about auditioning for a brand new short-form team at a new comedy theater in town.
I will never be the same.
I guess I owe a lot to Facebook. Gross.
Getting on that team opened the floodgates. I was in an artistic community again. I was telling stories with friends and making each other laugh.
Exploring
The creative juices snowballed. I branched out from improv and started trying standup, sketchwriting, and acting. I go through phases of crochet, embroidery, painting, and claymaking. I started performing at open mics with my new work and now I help produce one. I have the money and time to take classes on writing fiction and creative nonfiction. And now I have a blog on living creatively.
It took stepping away from the path of my childhood dream of working in movies to find my true artistic happiness.
The Answer
The key to happiness as an artistic person is a well-paying job you’re proud to do and finding your creative life in hobbies. At least in my experience.
This is an incredibly privileged thing to accomplish. So many things had to go right for me to end up where I am today, with this opportunity to make the world a better place through administrative work and laughter.
My family wasn’t well off but I had one. They gave me emotional support and the freedom to pursue my interests. They took out loans for me. They believed in me endlessly. Not everyone has that.
I’m bi but married to a man so while I deal with tons of biphobia, I don’t have to worry about strangers hurling slurs at me and my partner on the street. I don’t have to worry about being denied housing for my queerness or threats of “corrective rape” (just the normal kinds of rape I guess.).
I’m cis-presenting and never felt out of place in my body. Sure, I might dabble with gender internally but I’m not getting attacked at the workplace for using a specific bathroom. I’m not dealing with the decision to come out to employers or even family. I don’t have to worry about ostracization.
I am able-bodied. I have to navigate an extremely fatphobic world as a fat woman but I can still move freely and without support. The world was built for my ability. It’s too easy to take that for granted.
I’m a white woman. I know full well how authoritative figures and institutions see me. I’m just a sweet, incompetent girl. I don’t know any better, officer. Please don’t give me a ticket, I’m trying my best. Don’t let one mistake ruin my record.
Now that we’re here
If you find yourself in a similar position, where you’re starting to settle into a life you’re proud of doing work you love, it’s now time to pull up those coming in behind us. Both in your creative fields and in your career fields (which might be the same thing!) we need to actively look for opportunities to make the world an easier play for up-and-coming creatives.
My next blog post will be on that subject exactly. I’ll talk about actionable ways we can make a difference in the lives of those coming up behind us.
For those of you still not at that place on the hilltop of comfort and freedom, I see you. I encourage you to keep trying, to keep fighting back the oppressive force of existence in a world that is looking to keep you subservient and subdued. But take care of yourself. Give yourself time to heal in between battles. And know that I am here waiting for you.
Artfully Yours,
Jamie