This, exactly, describes my two former roommates, whom I’d mentioned upthread.
My artist friend doesn’t want to do commercial illustration, and doesn’t want to create what someone else wants – he has his own vision of what he wants to do with his art, and has long ago decided that any other form of “employment” is just destroying both his soul, and his muse. He makes ends meet by working at a crafts store, doing custom framing work, but though he’s done that for years, and is actually quite good at it, he absolutely hates the work, and is such a malcontent as an employee that he’s gotten fired from several different places over the years.
One other thing that I realized, as I’ve been thinking about those two guys (the artist, and the ren-faire actor) – both of them had fathers who were reasonably successful white-collar workers (I believe that one was an accountant, and the other was an insurance agent), and my friends grew up in comfortable middle-class households. But, both of my friends had poor relationships with their fathers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if part of their decisions to pursue “careers” that were no-traditional (and not very lucrative) was a desire to not be like their fathers.
I know an artist like that. He’s got a fairly low-cost lifestyle and a supportive wife who’s the primary breadwinner (and AFAIK no kids) and sometimes some good sales of his work. And he’s happy creating his art. And if it works for them, why would he need a different “career track”?
Yes, I was just about to add a #4 to Broomsticks list above - marry into money.
That sounds worse than it is but I know a couple of artists where its their spouse who makes the money. However they HAVE to be ready and available to take care of the kids which often is a full time job in itself.
Remember an old aftershave commercial where some guy who’s going nowhere in life gets slapped in the face and says "Thanks, I needed that!
Ok thats a little extreme but I think we all have had people give us career or personal advice. For some its just a nudge but for some of us its a kick in the pants.
Is it all bad?
I’ve been done out of a career by advancing technology twice now. I’m sort of hoping I can keep my current job either through retirement or my long awaited breakthrough as an artist - but if I have to I’ll do something else.
When I had a higher paying, more conventional “day job” the additional money was nice and I could buy better art supplies, but there was less time for the artwork. Also, yeah, I got distracted by aviation for around two decades - but I don’t regret that, either, and I’m glad I did it when I had the money to do so.
I’m hoping going forward I’ll be able to do more creative stuff, maybe segue from the “day job” to earning a living by my talents with pension/401(k)/SS evening out the income stream and enabling me to work at being an artist in my later years.
Let’s just say my parents were less than thrilled about my chosen career path in life. As parents, they were concerned not only with my happiness but my physical safety and ability to eat regularly. When it became clear this was not a “phase” mom’s comment to me was “OK, what’s your backup plan?” which is very much needed career advice for almost anyone.
On the other hand, threatening to disown a kid because they don’t go into the career their parents want is NOT helpful.
Some people are very self-driven and organized, some simply lack ambition. The best career advice is tailored to the person it’s directed to, and isn’t just about maximizing income (unless that IS what the person desires - some people simply like to make money) but also quality of life, providing for emergencies and the future, life goals beyond work, and for some a mid-life career change.
Ok, I will go along with pushing, heck even demanding, they have a “backup plan”.
I have a cousins daughter who went to college to become an actress. ONLY an actress. Nothing else not even theater related stuff like tech. Hardly anyone questioned her either because they all “wanted to be supportive and not judgmental”.
Her backup plan? I kid you not - is to marry a rich guy.
It was more a series of talks. I had been working at a standardized test scoring center, so I had periods of working a lot followed by periods of not working. Basically, it was time to get a steady 40 hour week job.
So you don’t drink coffee. You also, I presume, never eat in restaurants of any sort, or go to any public gathering places; you either do all your own cooking at home, or you have a personal chef who gets great pay and benefits and also does the dishes, or, I suppose, you get your friends who do crafts as a hobby to also do your cooking and cleanup and give your parties as a hobby. (There are indeed people who live like this. Most of them, IME, have very little money.)
And you think everybody who works at Amazon is doing better financially than everybody who works at bookstores. (I doubt, while we’re at it, that bookstores are dying entirely; but that’s a separate issue.)
There’s a thing people often miss: which is that the advice to take whatever the advisor thinks of as a job that will provide security may well not result in any such security. Technology changes; even when it doesn’t, companies go out of business (sometimes taking their pension plans with them); and lots of people who thought they were playing it safe wind up out in the cold.
No, of course not. If you know somebody who asks you for advice about changing their lives, by all means give them the best advice that you can. If you know somebody who hasn’t specifically asked you for advice but who is clearly unhappy with their situation, ask them if they want your advice. Ask them once. If they say no thanks, leave them alone on the subject; if they change their minds in the future, they’ll know that you offered.
But find some way to ask them that doesn’t amount to ‘I think what you’ve been doing with your life is useless and stupid.’ Especially if they’re doing something that you, and/or other members of the society, rely on somebody’s doing.
I think that this is very well said. There are some people who are going to welcome such advice, and want to figure out how they can get to a place where they’re more financially secure.
There are others for whom “doing what I love” is, by far, the most important thing to them, even if it comes at the expense of financial health. For people like that, even if you or I think that they’re “misguided,” advice to them to change things is likely to be met with disinterest, if not disdain. Ultimately, it’s their lives, and trying to get them to see the error of their ways is meddlesome, if not downright disrespectful.
I have a “misguided” friend. She’s made a living as an artist, as a migrant worker going from organic farm to organic farm, as a handyman, doing odd jobs for non-profits and community organizations. She doesn’t have a huge retirement savings…
but she’s happy. We’ve helped her out when she has a job or task on which she could use some guidance - i.e. art and non-profit led to some web design which has led to some IT work - and we’ve given her some advice because that’s our field.
She’s living her life the way that makes her happy. It wouldn’t be a life I’d choose, but its her life and I admire her for living it.
Lived in Knoxville, TN. Had a friend who wanted to get in the movie business. For some reason, at that moment in time, Wilmington, NC was seen as a relatively hot place for regional film production (kind of like Austin, TX, is today… but not even that level (at least Austin has SXSW)).
So our friend said “Hey, I’m going to go to Wilmington and try to break in the movie business.”
We were :dubious: to say the least. We invited her for breakfast, sat her down, and I told her the facts of life:
“If you’re willing to move to get into the movie industry, move to where the industry is already well-established. If you just want to play games and act like you’re in the film industry, sure, go to Wilmington. But, if you’re serious, you have two destinations: NYC and LA*.”
She went to LA. Within a year she had met Stephen Spielberg and a bunch of others… had a job with a marketing company who worked in the film industry, natch… changed her name to “Cadence” (which wasn’t that much of a stretch, considering she was “Crystal” before)… wasn’t too sure if where she was was where she wanted to be, but was thrilled because where she was was far closer than she had ever gotten, and would’ve gotten had she moved to (ugh) Wilmington.
We lost touch after that… I hope she’s doing well, but when we last spoke she was definitely doing better.
*Oddly enough, I’ve had the same conversation with my daughter about this very topic.
I’ve never thought of chefs as artist. And I would be surprised that a lot the small restaurant owners would think of themselves as artist rather than business owners.
But in terms of basic living, yes I can live without a lot of those stuffs, but we all need farmers. In the original post, I couldn’t understand how farming got listed next to bookstore/coffee shops.
Although farming is getting more and more mechanized, maybe in a few more years, farming won’t be a needed profession anymore.
Sure, we can all live subsistence living without the arts, but without artists, there’s no (or limited): music, theater, movies, television, books, paintings, sculptures, architecture, great food, fashion, home goods, websites…
I think the average person really downplays what artists are and how much of an impact they have on people’s lives. They hear artist and go, “oh, someone who paints”. That’s only a little tiny sliver of artists. You need creativity to create good dishes to eat. You need creativity to make beautiful buildings. You need creativity to write and film television shows. You need creativity to design blankets and pillows for the home. You need creativity to design dresses. You need creativity to design how a website looks. How phone apps look. You need creativity to even do makeup for newscasters. Those are makeup artists. ALL of these fields employ artists. Can you imagine a world without any books, any music, any movies, any television other than the news whatsoever (and the news is filmed really badly, and the lighting is off, and everyone is sweaty and pasty)? Really? NONE at all? You can imagine that? Can you imagine a world where websites are back to being just text on a screen, and your phone is the same? By the way, artists are involved in making your technology pretty, so I can’t even imagine how ugly all our technology would be without artists. No good looking cars, that’s for sure. And if you don’t think advanced math isn’t some of the most creative thinking in the world, you’d better think again. Sure, I will concede: you can get by just fine, but damn would the boredom be interminable until someone thinks, “shit, I guess I should sing to pass the time” and BAM an artist is born again. The world needs artists. We are what makes the world pretty and bearable rather than a bunch of brown huts (no architects) where people sit around in rags (no fashion designers) eating unseasoned potatoes (no chefs). You ever seen a nice piece of furniture? Even carpenters are artists. That’s why they were called artisans.
Anyway, that’s just my beef with stuff this thread is discussing. Open your mind as to what constitutes the arts, and what constitutes creativity, and how the arts touch just about every aspect of your life.
Several years ago me and some family helped out a BIL who, in his late twenties, had only ever been a couch-surfing pothead living off of parents and girlfriends and an occasional part time job. He wanted to get sorted out and we helped get him through connections into a solid corporate job with good pay, benefits, etc. We helped him with interview coaching, presentation and speaking coaching, business wardrobe, etc.
Six months later as soon as partial-disability compensation kicked in, he quit with an athsma diagnosis and went back to jobless coach-surfing pothead fully supported by his then fiancee. 10 years later, nothing has changed.
The Good Side of my family taught me that it is important to help people when you can. They also taught me that it is important to help people in ways they’re willing to accept. Otherwise we’re doing this:
(Lyrics Alberto Cortez; translation mine)
He wanted to fly just like the seagulls,
free in the air, like the air free,
and others said “what an idiot,
he doesn’t know it’s impossible to fly!”
But he rose his dreams to the sky
and slowly, slowly, up and up he rose
and the rest were left on the floor
preserving sanity.
And he built castles in the air
in the sunlight on cottony clouds
in a place nobody could ever
reached by reason alone.
And he built fabulous windows
full of light, magic and color
and summoned the fae spirit
who takes care of the business of love
And when others saw him so happy
they called an alert, rules were drawn
“it might be contagious”
being happy in such a fashion.
The result is clear and evident
for his madness they condemned him
to live with people again
dressed up in sanity
For he had built castles in the air
in the sunlight on cottony clouds
in a place nobody could ever
reached by reason alone.
And he had built fabulous windows
full of light, magic and color
and summoned the fae spirit
who takes care of the business of love
Here ends the tale of that idiot
who free in the air, like the air free,
wanted to fly just like a seagull…
but that’s impossible… or is it?
I dont think anyone is saying arts are not necessary or that they cannot be a viable career. I live in Kansas City and I know an artist who designs ornaments for Hallmark. I’ve also known people who do graphic arts. I know another professional painter. I know professional puppeteers. I know… I know… well lots of people who have careers in the arts.
But you have to figure out how to turn that talent into a career. Ex. for the painter guy I know its selling his work at art fairs and doing private contracts. The graphic artists worked their butts off figuring out those programs. I have a relative who is going into art as a career. That kid is almost always practicing drawing things.
Now back to my OP, Jen OTOH, really had no major talents. She just did little odds and ends jobs and sold a few little hats she knitted. That’s partly why Phil pushed her into getting a regular job.
Interesting your link is to some fancy fiddle players and an opry singer (hey I’m a redneck). All careers that the people have had to work hard to get in to.
I have a young friend who was working at an auto parts store, and he wanted to achieve more. He asked me how to break into IT and I mentored him on that.
He broke into IT, and I am simultaneously proud and sad about it. He’s well exceeded his previous salary and achieved well beyond his (legal immigrant) parents, but it’s not the great career I thought it was 20 years ago. I don’t actually know where the money is these days.