This is a crazy life. When I think about how crazy it is, I wonder who in their right mind would choose it.
This is the post where I come clean about how much I freak out on a regular basis. In case you were searching.
I freak out on a regular basis.
It’s part of this life I’ve chosen and I knew that going in. Well, sorta. Mostly. Let me explain.
If you haven’t already figured it out by now, I’m an artist. I make my living with my art. If that wasn’t clear, then it’s not your fault, it’s mine and I suck at marketing (which is kind of true anyway).
Making a living with art is probably one of the stupidest, most boneheaded, impractical ways of paying the rent ever invented. There are much easier ways. Pumping gas comes to mind. Waiting tables or bartending seem awfully secure and attractive when I stop to think about those things, which is usually anytime I’m in a restaurant or don’t have new projects in my pipeline.
I’ve worked in design firms and animation studios as a regular gig. It’s secure enough if you can also manage people and move up the chain, which I figured out how to do. Going solo is a whole new universe. It’s not secure. There’s nowhere to “move up to,” no system to master, no titles to hide behind, no kitchen stocked with soda and Costco-sized cases of chips.
Just me, with my boxers flapping in the wind. Weeeee!
If I want to pay my rent, I can’t just wait for my paycheck to roll in next Friday. I have to go bring that rent in somehow. Over the years I’ve become much better at banking the revenue for several months’ rent (vs buying a new Macbook that afternoon), so as far as financial security goes, it’s something you learn to control.
I know that people read my blog and my silly e-mails and imagine the magic faeries that dance around my studio as I paint pretty pictures. I haven’t exactly tried to dispel that myth, either. When I’m working on three different illustration projects and I have cash in the bank, this seems like a heavenly ride. So I shout about it online (you may have seen my tweets and given your screen the finger. I don’t blame you.).
Then the Bad Times come, where there are no projects imminent, the cash in the bank has dwindled, the rent is due, and I am freaking out.
You may have noticed the lack of tweets on that subject. Shameless image manipulation. See? I came clean. I have to admit, if I posted my freak-outs as often as they happen, I would lose people. Who wants to get on Twitter and get depressed? Raise your hand. Thought so.
So the freaking out happens. But I couldn’t even write about the fact that the freaking out happens if the freaking out didn’t resolve. Which it does.
But it doesn’t resolve itself and I am not a self-contained unit that perpetually manufactures it’s own de-freakification. I couldn’t do this alone.
A living contradiction
I grew up in a traditional American middle-class family. Hot dogs, soda pop, Laverne & Shirley, Mom, Dad, brother, sister, dog, house, church on Sunday.
Go to school. Learn the appropriate things. Get a good job (not too good, not too bad, something you can hate but pays the bills), get a nice house (better than you can afford), have a family, be secure.
I get bored easily. Restless. Nowadays they label that some disease or another and medicate. Whatever it is, it makes it completely impossible for me to live that kind of life (oh, wait! I remember – in the 70s they called us, “different.”).
Sure, I want a family (got one). I would like to have a house someday (I’m very picky). I’ve had “secure” jobs, but again, there’s that bored thing. Bye!
Long ago, when I left the military (Bye!) and Jenni and I moved back to the States, we settled in Chicago. I vaguely knew I wanted to do something with art, but since I hadn’t finished art school and was completely unskilled in graphic design my first art job was framing other people’s pretty pictures.
We had our first child and I couldn’t see how I would ever do the things that I wanted to do with my art when I had to do stuff like deliver bottled water to pay the bills. I worked in an investment bank. I eventually bluffed my way into a graphic design job, but the idea that I would ever be my own boss was like this little nagging thought in the back of my brain, like a popcorn kernel stuck in your tooth that you sometimes forget is there and then – pow! Oh, right. Hi there.
My thought process was slowly converting into the traditional mindset that I could never tolerate before. Depressing!
So here’s the contradiction. I have a wife and our two little babies are crawling around our (quite modest) one-bedroom apartment in central Phoenix. If I try to do the things I really want, our security will be at risk. It will be hard. I’ll probably freak out a lot.
The contradiction is that my wife and kids are the only reasons I was ever able to do any of this.
On my own, I had nobody to answer to about why, if I wanted a career in animation or art, I wasn’t doing that. It’s funny, but simply their presence gave me this incredible drive to do something more than work at any old job and bring home a paycheck. They weren’t a hindrance to reaching my goals, they were absolutely necessary.
I had these three people looking at me with all my weird dreams and ideas, willing me to succeed. One of those people had been doing it since before I could drive a car.
How I really make this all work
Check out that goofy photo to the right. That’s 1987. That’s two high school kids hopelessly in love, with no plan or clue about what might happen the next week, the next year, or the next decade. Clueless… and brimming with the kind of happiness that only clueless young love can deliver.
That’s about the time that Jenni started writing little notes for me that said things like, “I believe in you!” I still have them.
The next goofy photo is about twenty years later. That’s after going through all the births, car accidents, moves, illnesses, freak-outs, relationship stuff that challenges even the strongest marriage, and… she’s still writing little notes that say, “I believe in you!”
There’s one on my desk right now.
Sunday is our anniversary (17 years). Three kids, countless freak-outs, too many moves and job changes to count. Somehow she still
believes.
I can’t figure out why, but I’ll take it. I wouldn’t be writing about how I make my art business work if she wasn’t here.
So that’s it. That’s my Big Business Secret for the week.