Big Time Questions No.6

Are you able to work solely on your art or must you have another non-art related job to supplement your income?

Well I had a job packing boxes at a warehouse. I quit because I was losing my mind, and months of my life in that place. Now I'm trying to do freelance web design (a skill I've picked up from just playing around over the years) and doing ok with that, but freelance isn't very steady, and I'm really sick of Ramen and grilled cheese so I think a part-time job is in my future. But I like having free time. Free time is more important than anything else to me. I always have projects I'm working on. I have no head for business, so I rarely make any money on anything, but that's because I don't even know how to think about my projects on a monetary basis. I wouldn't know how to begin selling stuff that I cared about. I think life is a far more important skill to practice than art. When it comes down to it, I don't care if I made cool, or interesting works of art, or wrote great stories, or did whatever, I just hope to have had an interesting life. All the other stuff is just stuff you leave in your wake. Evidence or fossil remains maybe. Bits of you with better shots at immortality than your physical body.

Like I mentioned earlier, I also work at a printing studio with a real-life Artist, who is a great guy. I actually have very little interest in kissing ass up the ladder of the art world either, but I would love to infiltrate it because I feel it's a very rigid community, and there is so much more to push against and play with within uptight frameworks like that. So I have a bunch of projects that I would love to execute in an "Art" context, but I don't know if I will ever be in a good position to execute them.