minoanmiss (
minoanmiss) wrote in
agonyaunt2021-09-22 11:55 am
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Dear Prudence: Artfully Employed
I am a very talented artist. I am internationally known in my field. I work regularly. I am respected by people in my industry. I make very little money from it. I think the reason for this is I have debilitating social anxiety and ADHD, which means I completely fail at the business end of it. I recently broke down and got a part-time desk job to bring in some cash, until, hopefully, either or both of my businesses take off and I can quit. Even though, for the most part, everyone is nice to me at the desk job, I die a little inside every time I go. I am a thirtysomething woman with a master’s degree and an international portfolio, and I spend my days scanning and answering phones. How do I keep my self-esteem in this situation?
A: This is much easier said than done, but can you work on disconnecting your self-esteem from your desk job? Artists have been working day jobs to pay the bills practically since the beginning of time! Maybe connecting with others in similar situations, or checking out memoirs and biographies about creative people who lived similar lives would be helpful? And keep in mind, lots of people who aren’t internationally known artists work jobs about which they aren’t passionate and still manage to feel good about themselves—by focusing on their families or friendships or hobbies or just the kind of people they want to be. Try to tap into some of that kind of thinking. And in the meantime, can you take some time to start to get help with your social anxiety and ADHD? If those are the only things standing between you and making an income from your art, it seems worth trying to find ways to navigate living with them so you can have the life you really want.
A: This is much easier said than done, but can you work on disconnecting your self-esteem from your desk job? Artists have been working day jobs to pay the bills practically since the beginning of time! Maybe connecting with others in similar situations, or checking out memoirs and biographies about creative people who lived similar lives would be helpful? And keep in mind, lots of people who aren’t internationally known artists work jobs about which they aren’t passionate and still manage to feel good about themselves—by focusing on their families or friendships or hobbies or just the kind of people they want to be. Try to tap into some of that kind of thinking. And in the meantime, can you take some time to start to get help with your social anxiety and ADHD? If those are the only things standing between you and making an income from your art, it seems worth trying to find ways to navigate living with them so you can have the life you really want.
So my reactions, in order.
2) Self, that reaction is about you, not her.[I went to an Ivy. I have a pink collar career. More than one coworker has told me, "you're bright, you should go to college," to give you an idea of the jobs I have had. I struggle with self-esteem because of this.]
3) This would need a cash infusion, but I think what LW could use is to hire someone to do the business side for her. Manage appointments, payments, bookkeeping, that kind of thing. Someone wrote in and suggested an agent or gallery representation for the LW.
4) Obvs she also needs treatment, but I think this is a place where the treatment and the business building could go hand in hand.
Re: So my reactions, in order.
I was going to stay start by examining why you think the work you're doing and the people who do it aren't deserving of esteem.
Re: So my reactions, in order.
To her or to me?
ETA I had to think a lot about this one to make it short. Because of both personal and societal factors (I wanted to have a job that benefits society; I belong to several demographics that society generally disfavors and I wanted to help change that) I feel guilty about having "wasted" my education doing jobs that don't use it. (Entertainingly my current job does use my education, though it doesn't pay like it.) Both personally and towards society, since my pink collar career could be used to reinforce the very stereotypes I wanted to help demolish.
Which leads into the second half of it. I know how people view people with jobs like mine. I have been told by not a few women in professional careers that admins are stupid, unambitious, officious, and generally worthless -- that's annoying coming from men but it hurts coming from fellow women. And yet I understand why those women want to distance themselves from admins. "If you're going to be a lawyer/doctor/professor don't learn to type," they used to tell women getting professional degrees.
It's not that the jobs I've had during my career don't deserve consideration. It's just that I experienced time and again that they don't get consideration, that people think I'm stupid because I'm doing these jobs, and that I have failed to accrue the societal power to change this.
I wonder what the LW's answer would be.
Re: So my reactions, in order.
Re: So my reactions, in order.
More in a bit.
ETA Yeah, I'm not sure what's more annoying, the intense feeling of having wasted my personal potential or the knowledge that I have slotted myself into places in society that I didn't want to be.
I tried to deal with this by doing admin work in "meaningful" places (a school and a hospital) but all I learned was how many people would assume I'm mindless because of the job I do.
I want to convince people that pink collar work isn't stupid, but I don't know how.
Re: So my reactions, in order.
Re: So my reactions, in order.
Re: So my reactions, in order.
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I also agree with
Unfortunately, hiring someone, unless you are very lucky, is also very hard if you have social anxiety, adhd, and no business experience. And even if you do hire someone, you should know enough about the job you're hiring them for to know if they're doing a competent job.
You say you have a master's degree, but did that include any significant amount of training on running your art as a business? If so, is there someone at your alma mater you can reach out to for mentorship or resources? A lot of art degrees don't include any business training, though, or not enough, which is a big failure of the system. You don't magically learn how to run a business just by being good at your art, and there's lots of neurotypical people who run aground on that too! (Ask me sometime for the story of the very talented artist friend who had been running a "business" for five years and not yet realized he needed to, a, figure out the base cost of a print run, and b, set his sales price higher than that.)
This sounds like a good time to step back from focusing on art for a bit and learn about business. You have options! Do you have any trusted friends or family who have experience with accounting, administrative work, or running a small business (any small business, of any size - even the person who sells knitting at craft fairs may have experience to share.) Would they be willing to look over your books and files and give you advice on what to change on the business end, as a favor or for a one-time mate's rate? Is there a community college or community center nearby that's offering low-priced classes on basic skills for running a business? A business incubator or community development corporation nearby? Are there relevant MOOCs, or video courses you can access via your local library? (Actually, going to your local library and asking for help finding learning resources for small business owners is a great place to start. Even just a "for dummies" book from the library is more than a lot of artists I've met are starting with.) Are there regular clients or other artists that you're friendly with who you could ask for advice, or at least war stories, about running a business in your field?
And finally - the majority of small businesses never take off, and the majority of small business owners have at least one failed business behind them. Be aware of the sunk costs fallacy, and be ready to admit it if something isn't working, and figure out how to change course.
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1. Connections - tough if you have social anxiety, but if you've got an international audience already, you're farther along than most people!
2. Consistency - tough if you have ADHD, but if you can deliver the product that clients are expecting, and meet a deadline, and produce art frequently enough that you stay on everyone's radar, you are far ahead of 99% of artists. And if you can't do these things, it doesn't really matter how much talent or formal education you have.
3. Accounting - a surprising number of artists are so bad at this that they end up selling their art at a loss. You don't have to have a degree, but you have to be capable of tracking income and expenses well enough to know if you're making or losing money on something. And nobody can give you a hard line of what is a good business risk and what isn't, but you should at least be aware of when something you're doing *is* a risk, and when it isn't.
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I feel like LW has absorbed the 'do what you love and you'll never work a day of your life' mentality so prevalent in our hustle-your-heart society. Most people work 'mundane' jobs to fill the pantry and pay the bills; there's no shame in it.
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I mean, I love my job, and it's still work.
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Also, I feel like Prudie's answer ... what. It's ok, but basic. Prudie clearly has no connection to the struggling-artist-sole-proprietor world, and it shows. There are lots of resources out there - groups of artists that support and promote each other, run Facebook private groups to gripe about things and give advice, resources for learning how to run the business side of things, people you can hire to run the business side of things, places you can turn to that specifically help with social anxiety, ADHD and running an art business while dealing with them. I mean, the thing that does make me cock my head at LW is the fact that they're an internationally known artist and haven't run into these support mechanisms themselves - they're not hard to find, and some will come looking for you (especially the ones that promise to make the business side of things better for a mere $XX - they may not be worth it, but they do contain info that point the way towards the things that will help). I feel like Prudie is basically saying, "you're not alone (but I don't know where your people actually are)."
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alone (but I don't know where your people actually are).""
Prudie basically admits as much in reply to someone suggesting the LW get an agent or join a gallery.
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And based on my experience on the fringes of the struggling-artist world: there are a lot of people out there who think they just need to put good art onto the internet and voila they will have a viable business, it would never even occur to them to look for industry resources or informal support groups, especially if they are socially anxious and have let that isolate them generally. Also, most of the people I know were mostly self-taught - I think some people who go to prestige art schools *without* being in communities first get debouched directly into commercial contracts without being in "struggling artist" mode first, and then when the art school connections aren't enough they don't know where else to go.
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Unless the co-workers for this LW are worse than her letter lets on, it sounds like the only thing preventing this job from being a solid day job is LW's feelings about it.
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I agree, LW comes across as an elitist snob, and she needs to re-calibrate her attitude of "I'm too GOOD for this, I'm INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED!" Because she can be internationally recognized all she likes, but if people aren't willing to pay for her work, it doesn't mean a damn thing. She needs to look at her priorities. If she wants to make enough money so she can walk away and do her art, she needs to figure out what steps she needs to take to get to that point. If she wants to do her art and have people give her money, she needs to figure out those steps too. But she needs to stop this "I'm too good for this shit" attitude.