Make it Work

After a decade of post-secondary education I somehow have no employable skills. I stare glossy-eyed at the LinkedIn job postings and wonder how anyone has 5+ years of experience and 10 different skillsets required for just one position. I think about the ridiculousness of it all, the futility, the absolute audacity of these companies who expect curated cover letters, custom CV’s and resumes that hit every key-word their algorithms search for to even have a shot at standing out among the hundreds of applicants. If you’re lucky enough to even get an interview, you then must go through the emotional rollercoaster of the interview process and the ego-death of being rejected over and over again. The pursuit of stability and monetary abundance is a mind game. It’s a rat race and I’m just a little mouse trying to paint pictures and regulate my nervous system. I can’t be out here fighting to find stability in a 9-5 that will ultimately pull me away from myself.

So I pick a different kind of fight.

The fight to pursue a dream, to pursue the gift that I’ve unconsciously nurtured throughout my entire life from the moment I could hold a pencil. I fight for the right to be an artist, in an unforgiving city, in a society that doesn’t value artists the way they should be valued. I fight against the “Starving Artist” trope. I fight against myself some (most) days when I wonder where my next pay-check will come from, if I shouldn’t just pick up another BS job in the meantime to relieve some financial burdens. It’s a constant battle that no one sees, but many suffer through. If you’re reading this I want you to know that you are not alone. If you feel listless, hopeless, defeated, exhausted, under-qualified, I’m right there with you and I’m here to remind you that your worth as an artist is not tied up in how much income you’re generating.

First of all- we were not put on this earth to plug away at computers for 8 hours a day, to line the pockets of billionaires and conglomerate companies while we watch the world burn around us. We are not here to have our worth reduced down to imaginary numbers and fake credit scores. We are not our income, our assets or our net worth. We are human beings, born free in a system that was built broken. Every human should have access to shelter, clean water and food and we can’t even get that right in our “developed” society- so if you have these things, AND you have a little time to make some art, consider yourself blessed. We really don’t need much more despite what social media drills into your brain every millisecond of the day.

Now that that’s out of the way…

Money Magic, an old illustration of mine

On the days when I’m feeling especially self-loathing I try to look around at all of the positive things in my life. I have a cozy apartment (that sometimes catches on fire lol), food to cook, an artist boyfriend to share the struggle with, a beautiful family and not much else besides my worldly possessions. I might not have a savings account or a retirement plan set in place, but do artists every really retire? Someone else’s blog somewhere says No.

If you’re struggling with self-deprecating thoughts I encourage you first to try to find gratitude anywhere and everywhere. Look at the sunset, find simple joys in the everyday. Your cup of coffee, that cute dog you saw on the sidewalk, the confetti of colourful leaves in the gutter. The energy you put out is the energy that will return to you. If you feel like you’ve got nothing to be grateful for at the moment, write down your desires and core values. This is something that I do to reaffirm my path and keep me on track. It reminds me what I’m working towards and why I chose this lifestyle. It’s easy to fall into shame-spirals when it feels like you just cant get ahead in life but at a certain point you need to let go of your shame. If you’re like me, you’ve been down this road before, you’ve made it work with less and you’ll continue making it work. Trust yourself to have your own back and if you’re lucky enough to have supports, lean on them.

I think we can all agree that many of life’s little problems would go away if we had more money, but the big problems and questions remain: What am I doing here? What is my purpose and what makes me happy and fulfilled?

At our very core we know why we’re here and what our true purpose is- to create despite it all, in defiance of it all because we know that we have one life, and to spend it doing anything other than creating would be a disservice to ourselves and to the world (so dramatic lol). I also think that many people who choose to pursue the arts hate being told what to do. To live the life of an artist is to throw your middle finger in the faces of everyone who says it’s too hard, too unattainable, too precarious, even though they’re right to some degree. So we struggle a little bit, we make ends meet and we make it work for us, however we can, whatever that looks like.

What other choice to we have?