Artists: How to stop hating your day job, part two -- Career Center Blog

July 23, 2010

Artists: How to stop hating your day job, part two

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By Michelle Goodman
NWjobs

In my last post, I gave suggestions for artists and other creative types who feel frustrated by their day jobs, based on a conversation I had earlier this month with Summer Pierre, author of the new book, The Artist in the Office: How to Creatively Survive and Thrive Seven Days a Week.

[Summer Pierre, as illustrated by Summer Pierre]

My previous post focused on ways you can carve more time from your hectic 9-to-5 (or 5-to-9) workweek for your art. The following suggestions -- culled directly from Pierre's life -- will help you inject a tad more creativity into your daily routine, what Pierre calls "integrating your dream life with your real life."

List the ways your day job benefits your art. Maybe you have a flexible schedule that allows you to pursue auditions during business hours. Or your paycheck enables you to rent a studio and purchase painting supplies. Or you teach preteens three seasons a year and write short stories when school's out each summer. The point, Pierre says, is to recognize that you can live your dream life as an artist and your real life as a paycheck-earner at the same time. In fact, if you're working at your art on the side, you already are.

Use your daily routine as inspiration. Most creative types with a paycheck compartmentalize their art and their day job, erecting a Berlin Wall between the two. Pierre advises against this, instead recommending you practice random acts of on-the-job artiness. "Your artistic life never ends, even when you go to the job," she says. For this reason, she suggests folding bite-sized creative projects into your daily commute or employment routine -- from documenting your commute with a poem, a comic strip, or song lyrics to making a collage of a week's worth of stuck-in-a-meeting notepad doodles. Just be sure that your on-the-job artiness doesn't interfere with the work that those who sign your paycheck have charged you to do.

Put your digital camera to work. Of all the possible tools artists can use to document their workweek (from journals and sketchpads to digital equipment), Pierre is quick to call the digital camera her favorite. Collecting a series of related images throughout the workweek -- whether you're photographing your coworkers' shoes, a week's worth of self-portraits taken at 5 p.m., or the mugs on your colleagues' desks -- not only helps you flex your creative muscle during the workday, it breaks up the monotony (for your coworkers too). As Pierre puts it, "It's just a reminder that you're constantly alive."

Michelle Goodman is the author of "My So-Called Freelance Life" and "The Anti 9-to-5 Guide." E-mail Michelle at mgoodman@nwjobs.com

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greenhousegirl | October 16, 2010 11:58 PM | Reply

Thanks for your article. It gave me a great idea. I work at a greenhouse/nursery, and I am also an artist. I thought from now on, during my lunchbreak, I can grab a plant from the nursery, take it to our break area, and do sketches of them!

rose98103 | January 16, 2011 11:34 PM | Reply

I have a killer commute that I do in my own mini-van. I decided a few weeks ago that when the weather allows, I'm going to start taking my guitar with me to work. At lunch-time I can go out to my van, sit in the middle seat with my guitar and practice for :20 minutes. I already play for :20 when I wake up, :20 after work and :20 before bed -- this keeps my practice fresh and gives my fingers a break in-between. Adding :20 at lunch would be just the ticket to help me move that much closer towards my goal of being a "real" classical guitarist, not a dreamer-wannabe.

As my hands get stronger, I could practice for up to an hour at lunch-time, an hour in the morning and an hour plus at night. Three to four hours per day is right in the zone for professional classical guitarists -- they practice smarter, not harder. I could keep working full-time at my well-paying gig and still develop pro-quality chops as a classical guitarist. It's not an either-or proposition.

This idea that we have to be starving artists living in a freezing hovel eating Top Ramen is just one way of constructing a life as an artist. It's not the only way to achieve our goals -- especially if we're willing to work full time, have some personal discipline and give up television, mindless partying and general laziness for our art.