Along with the grind comes a lot of frustration about...everything.
Work, stability at work, ability to do the work, spending so much time at work, not being able to get to know people that I haven't worked with before at work, trying to sneak in derby emails while working, looking at derby schedules, new derby protocols, derby planning, derby discussions, and derby derby goddam derby.
I'm about to start a lovely burnout run that will go on until October, unless I either get shitcanned off the job or I quit half my derby responsibilities. None of these options sound very fun.
I feel very stagnant in my life right now. Nothing seems to be moving forward; I feel that I'm struggling to keep a status quo that is slipping away into the ether. But I don't have a lot of time to sit and come up with an Alternative Plan For My Life. Hell, when I did have time to come up with such a plan, I procrastinated like an asshole.
So I'm essentially backed into a corner of my own doing.
But...what would I do with myself if I didn't do derby and animation? Could I eke out a living doing my own art, even though I'm THE WORST salesperson for myself EVAR?
While I ponder my life falling apart, enjoy the photos of the cute animals.
3 comments:
I don't know if you should be so hard on yourself. I think your blog is kind of like selling yourself, and there's so much here that interests me in you, and what you're doing. And art is just a reflection of self, right? Or at least that's one possibility.
I guess I think you could do it, is the point. I have a belief that if you can draw cartoons and throw forearms while on roller skates, anything's possible. You're like a super-hero.
I say if you want to sell your own art, come up with a plan to sell your own art. If you're bad at marketing, then figure out how to get good at it. Someone was telling me that there are a few marketing classes for artists in LA.
But while I'm being a hardass about this, I also want to tell you that I totally feel your pain. I'm shy and I used to find the prospect of promoting myself particularly distasteful.
As you can see, I've gotten over that.
Actually, I think being shy has served me well, b/c it gives me a good inner-compass. For example, if I don't want to ask someone for a favor or go to certain events, then I do it anyway, b/c I know that my fear means this is probably something I SHOULD be doing. I hope that makes sense.
Anyway, this is the angsty part of the story where you try to resist your true calling then end up doing it anyway. This isn't the fun part. But in my opin, very few people choose to go their way in art -- especially if they're already getting paid to do somebody's else's art.
I've heard so many stories like mine, where people felt compelled to go their own way until they basically HAD to do it or go crazy.
So right now you're making the difficult choice of taking the hard road or the easy road -- which isn't really easy, b/c if you take that road forever, you will die insane and depressed.
Sorry to sound so grim, but this is the way of art. In many ways it feels more like a curse than a calling, and I think a lot of us feel that we have choices within it that we don't really have. [cont'd in next post...]
[...cont'd from last post]
There are ways to make the hard road easier, however. You can accept that you're taking the hard road and that you might die w/o insurance and poor. Deciding to write novels even if I never made a dime from them helped me immensely. You can also continue to do the easy work, while doing more and more of the hard work, until suddenly you have more hard work than easy work.
But it all begins with the choice, which it sounds like your sorta of trying not to make...
Post a Comment