Career Advice Should Start With, “You’re Going to Die.”
I’ve noticed something. There’s a strange up and down to the advice you get when you announce that you want to pursue the arts for your career. It’s really no wonder that so many artists, writers, and musicians end up confused, a little bit crazy, and ultimately unfulfilled.
Here’s the progression of career advice for artists:
Stage 1. Go for it, kid. When you’re a little kid and you announce that you want to pursue some artistic profession like writing, painting, or music, everyone encourages you. “Sure, we’ll get you music lessons, buy you art supplies, and read all your stories and tell you how great you are and how far you can go.” If nothing else, this is educational stuff, so people feel free to encourage your dreams. They figure you’ll grow out of it.
Stage 2. You’ll never make a living. When you hit high school and the “vocational counselors” come out of the woodwork, you start hearing, “The arts are fine, but you need to pursue something practical so you can make money. The arts are for hobbies. Get a real job and do your art on the side.” You pack your dreams away in favor of more practical things and head off to college or the military, secure in the knowledge that, while you might not be happy, you’ll at least get to eat on a regular basis.Â
Stage 3. You’re free to do what you want. Buck the system! Then you hit college (or, if you don’t go to college, you’re probably still hanging out with some like-minded artsy types) and suddenly it’s back to, “Pursue your passion! Explore whatever moves you. Screw the overlords that want to keep the arts down!” This is especially true if you end up in a liberal arts program or at college in a city with an artsy/hippie vibe. You drag your artistic pursuits back out and think, “Hmm. Maybe I can do something with this,” and you’re egged on by the supportive community of dreamers that college fosters.Â
Stage 4. Keep up with the Jones's, fool! That lasts for the four years of school. Once you’re out of college, you get hit with the pressure to achieve, make money, and accumulate all those hallmarks of the American dream: Nice car, big house, 2.5 kids, etc. (Also, you really shouldn’t be living on your parents’ couch.) This is not usually compatible with an artistic life so you’re back to looking for a “real” job so you can give your family all the benefits of a consumerist lifestyle. At this point, you may find yourself going back to school for a degree in something “useful.”
Stage 5. You’re going to die soon, so you’d better live your dreams! Later in life, after the kids are gone and you’re on your own again, you start hearing people talking about their regrets and how they wish they’d pursued their passions while they were still young. All of the advice swings back to, “Get out there! Make your art! Don’t die with regrets!” The problem now is that unless you’ve kept up with your pursuits and practiced enough (and you’re healthy enough to work hard), it’s probably too late to do anything significant with them. You’ve run out of time at exactly the moment that you have the time and money to pursue your dreams.
Here’s a thought: Life goes by so fast, wouldn’t it be easier to start with, “You’re going to die soon, so you’d better live your dreams?”
It would save everyone a lot of trouble and angst. Sure, you might have to change your life plan to accommodate the vagaries of an artistic life, but isn’t that better than the constant stop-start approach that conventional advice encourages?
If a kid starts at eight and sticks with her art over many years, she has just as much chance of making a career with it as any other occupation. It’s the stop-start that kills the learning and momentum and makes it harder to earn a living the more time that goes by.
When artistically-inclined kids get to high school, the guidance counselors shouldn’t say, “Get a real job,” they should say, “You’re going to die, so do whatever the hell you want and enjoy it.”