Its Never Going To Be A Straight Easy Line
Taking the road of being an artist, a creative, is never easy. There are millions of people who took a safer way and that is a perfectly valid choice to make. We all need doctors, cleaners, waiters, and garbage people. Each job and way of life out there is important, but it needs to be your choice.
Like me, you find a different calling. Something a little less concrete and with a lot of ups and downs. We may never be rich, but we will never be bored. Because we allow the wildness to stay and cultivate to walk alongside us. Some days are magical where things work out and others you can even remember how to spell ‘though’ (yes that is a specific problem of mine). But I’d rather have those bad days then go back to being around rude and creepy people.
And it will not be a straight line. All these people on social media show such a cute timeline. How easy it is and that everyone can do “just like them”. But you can’t. Not that you cannot get to where you want but so many cannot replicate the same success down the same road. Most of these people do not show the back and forth they had to go through. Testing things out and a lot of big fails. Sometimes all the planning in the world and all the support will not stop something from being a disaster.
But we get back up. Because we can’t and won’t do something else. Honestly, a lot of what I’m doing and make now is more then 10 years in the making. I bought my first DSLR in college just so I’d have decent pictures for studying abroad. I wrote short poems in the margins of school notebooks just because the phrase wouldn’t leave my mind. Read that book that gave actual good advice about writing fiction for people who got ruined by academic writing. I never thought those would lead to anything. Just something I wanted in the moment.
And I am not there yet. I still do a lot of freelance work to make sure I can pay bills, but it took years to get to here. Finding the write things and people to work from home. Letting go of things (and people) that were holding me back. Believe me, I’ve had some horrible jobs, some ok ones but with horrible days, of good ones that I still miss the people from. But my introverted ass wants to be left alone at home. The worse I get it some writer’s block or a headache for looking at a screen for too long I’d rather take this.
I am still building towards a full-time living from my writings and other creative works. Its a slow process. Some things going very well and others seeing very little. But I am very proud of everything that I have made. Not just because I didn’t let me fear stop me but because it was something I wanted to put out into the world and shared it anyways.
And you can do this too, whatever you have been dreaming of. Yeah, you may have to stay at a job you hate a little longer. Then take the steps needed to move towards what you want. Be part-time if you can, or a job that pays a little less but gives you more free time. It will be slow and sometimes you have to put that dream to the back burner for a little bit. But you can always take it again because it doesn’t have to be a never, but not right now.
