Making Art, Making a Life – Pt. 2: Priorities are Paramount

In my last post (Making Art, Making a Life – Pt. 1), I suggested that every artist needs to be doing something to satisfy their creative side, and I posed a question: What do you do if you’re not making a living from your art or working a satisfying “passion peripheral” job (something that is close to your art)?

For this post, I want to talk about priorities.

I recall a conversation with my older brother several years ago. He asked me how a particular project was going, and I said I didn’t have time to work on it. He said, “That’s not true. You just haven’t made it a priority.”

Ahh, siblings. But he wasn’t wrong.

When I think about being an artist (and the idea that artists must create), I believe you have three main options:

1. Make a living doing your art or at a job that is closely related (“passion peripheral” … I really should copyright that)
2. Work the “day job” even if it’s not related to your art, and find a way to make some money doing your art or something closely related
3. Work the day job, and create when and however you can purely for the sake of creating – and your sanity

When choosing an option, responsibilities have to be factored in.

Are you single? Beholden only to yourself and your bills? Pick any of those three options and go for it. I’m guessing you’ll pick Option 1.

If you add in another living being (spouse, partner, pet, kids), your options may change because your responsibilities change.

You might find your priorities change as well, but more on that shortly.

In my household, we require two paychecks. It’s my responsibility to contribute in whatever way I can. As I mentioned in the last post, some of my past contributions have come from jobs that were closer to my artist side than others, and I’m grateful for that (and these days, I’m grateful to have a job at all).

After responsibilities, we come to priorities.

Maybe you want to maintain a certain standard of living – or to take a family trip or two, build a new deck, get another motorcycle.

One of my priorities is avoiding taking on debt whenever possible, so if I’m not living Option 1 (or not making enough money at Option 1), I pursue Option 2: make money on the side – optimally doing “something closely related” to my art. I’m fortunate I have a side gig as a ghostwriter, which fits that bill. It’s not as fulfilling as writing fiction, but it pays – as opposed to the constant grind of submitting fiction to every publisher possible and waiting hopefully for the acceptance letter.

I’m assuming there are equivalents for other artists

In other words, ghostwriting meets one my priorities…so it has to take priority when it comes to my free time. I’m assuming there are equivalents for other artists. For example, my wife is a dancer. She loves teaching modern dance, but it’s a lot easier to get work teaching ballet or jazz dance.

Are you out there, other artists? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Have I oversimplified (as I’m liable to do)?

I was going to keep going and segue into the topic of “conflicting priorities,” but again, I’m trying to keep these posts shorter. So I’ll save that for the concluding Part 3…which will probably be long because I’ve said it’s going to be the conclusion. We’ll see, I guess.

Related post: Making Art, Making a Life – Pt. 3

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