You gotta be a little delusional...🌛✨
before we get to it, here's the song of the summer!
ART OF THE MONTH🖌️
THE BIG MEAT🖌️
You know, lately it’s been a real whirlwind of events. A lot feeling like bad news, personal and non personal. All of this reminds me of how little control I have, not just life outside of me, but including what happens in my own life.
If I had a dollar for every time I stayed up way past my bedtime thinking: “Am I just making things worse for myself by taking this path?”. I see how my peers who have started families, gotten great jobs, and healthy bank accounts. I feel so inadequate, not because I want their life..but because these people knew that I wanted to pursue art..and either expected more of me or aren’t surprised that I turned out to be a bit of a loser.
But for some reason I like, can’t stop myself from thinking that if I just keep going that something will give. Something must go right for me in this career path, right?
As much as I compare myself to others who have taken, let’s be honest, smarter career paths..I just can’t see myself doing what they did. Not because I think I’m better than them, but because I think I’m literally too delusional to accept anything else.
I know, it’s not very wise of me to think this way, maybe it’s because I’m an Aries (if that means anything). Maybe it’s because I’ve seen what doing the smart thing does to people and how it can crush their spirits. I remember back at my very first grown-up job, (where I would work until my body nearly gave up, where I was stressed to bits) asking a co-worker what she did after work. She simply answered something a long the lines of ‘nothing’. Just nothing. And that made me realize that I also did nothing after work..
I never had the energy to make anything after, just squeezed in as many doodles possible in between low active times. Any moment I got to draw was precious, which at first was nice because I didn’t have to depend on my art to make money. But I could feel myself being hollowed out by this job, feeling emptier each day I clocked in. The worst part of it all was the stress, so much stress day in and day out! All this stress, for what?
The real kicker is that the job was only 4 hours a day! But it brought me so little satisfaction, so little enjoyment that even just four hours was enough to nearly put me in a hospital.
“Yadda Yadda, no one likes their day job, Jay.” is what you may be thinking..Hey I’m thinking it too. But, I guess this is where the delusional part comes in. I am stressed out and majorly bummed out, because I don’t have money, because I don’t know what my future will look like, because I don’t know how sufficient this work will be in covering rent, healthcare and food.
But guess what? With a real job, a dependable job.. I will be stressed out and majorly bummed out, because I don’t have money, because I don’t know what my future will look like, because I don’t know how sufficient that job will be in covering rent, healthcare, and food. And…I will be even more miserable because I will be too tired to make anything , just like before. So why not, just do the thing that I want to do? That I know I can do?
Listen I’m not saying everyone should quit and follow their dreams, this is why it’s called being Delusional. I think you have to be , a little bit, to follow the path of an artist. You have to think that you are the exception, because if you don’t..well then you won’t be!
(just to be clear I do have a job again but I get called in like once a month and it’s the only way I can do it I realize.)
Anyways, who knows maybe the next newsletter will just be me saying ‘actually YOU SHOULD get a job and leave all your hopes and dreams behind!’ , don’t take anything I say here as facts or wisdom. It’s just the epic highs and lows of being a full-time artist.
With that being said, I hope you all can follow your dreams as well, later!