If you’re not happy, comics won’t make you happy
on July 3rd, 2010Follow up thoughts from the thread about Wally Wood below:
Which came first? The depression or the comics career?
Sad accounts of creator’s lives; they throw everything they’ve got at comics (or acting/writing/fine art/fill-in-the-blank,) and end up in a very bad way.
My completely unprovable theory is that some emotionally-challenged people are attracted to fantasy-oriented careers in hopes of creating a world they can enjoy, and in which they can find acceptance.
And when they can’t find joy in that career, when the work doesn’t make up for the other things wrong in their lives, they implode.
Comics is a business. It is not a nurturer, it won’t make up for the fact that you were picked on in high school, it isn’t the family you never had, it’s not the boyfriend who will love you.
It’s a very tough business.
It won’t make you happy if you are not happy. It will make you even unhappier if you can’t be happy without it.
What little I know of Wood tells me he was a deeply disturbed man, and there was no way comics was going to heal what was hurting him.
I had an extremely sad encounter some time ago with an older pro who had fallen on hard times. Did not know him well at all, but out of the blue, he contacted me for help. He told me he was discriminated against because of his age. He lied about his age, too, shaving off the years: I’d never met a man who did that before. He was no older than a number of very popular creators I could name.
When I finally got to see him some time later, I was appalled. He was emaciated, filthy, and he stank. He left his smell on my clothes, and I had to speak to him with my hand over my lower face to avoid his breath, and to keep from gagging.
One look would keep any client from hiring this guy. Aside from his personal hygiene, he acted insane. He didn’t need a career, he needed immediate medical care. I got him medical care – that day – and gave him money. He walked out of the medical facility that same day, and immediately blew the money.
I later found out that a number of other people had been giving him money, too. He repeatedly lied to me about his circumstances (loans, jobs, contacts, etc.)
On finding out he had misrepresented himself and had not made wise use of the medical care or money, I cut him off.
You probably have never heard of this dude, and I don’t really know him at all. Since I had no legal standing in the matter and live in another state, there was absolutely nothing further I could (or wanted to) do.
I bet he still thinks he is discriminated against because of his age. All he could talk about was how he had to get more assignments. Yet clients gave him assignments he never completed. He disappeared for weeks at a time. Then showed up filthier than ever looking for jobs, for help, for handouts.
I don’t see a happy ending for this guy. For all I know, the end has already come.
You can’t help some people.
Some of these dudes don’t need comic book jobs. They need mental health care. Helping them stay in this business with mercy jobs and handouts is enabling, not art patronage.
Some people should get as far away from the art and entertainment business as possible.
When things go well as a creator, there is nothing like it. It’s a high, an emotional drug. Some people get addicted to it. They don’t look at any payoff except the payoff of seeing their work being seen. Eating, medical care, roof over head: tertiary concerns. Until the day they wake up and realize they are fifty-years-old, they have no savings, nowhere to live, and their teeth are falling out.
There are so many people who will never get to see their work professionally published. One gig would satisfy them for life.
And there are others who, once having tasted the apple, they live the tortures of Tantalus, the juiciest fruit forever out of reach.
One job isn’t enough, one success isn’t enough. Whatever they had, they want it again. Whatever someone else has, they want that, too.
Few people have long term careers in any field of art and entertainment. Not being able to sustain this gig for decades is not failure. The only failure is in not being able to lead a happy, fulfilling life. You don’t need a pro career to do that. Immolating yourself on your art pyre will not make you a better artist or writer.
My friend Julie Ditrich gave me a great talk about self awareness: knowing who you are, what you are, your capabilities, your limits.
I am a professional artist, and I have had very little training. I had more than 12 years of training in music. That’s one hell of an investment.
Back in the Dark Ages, I was cast as a lead in a production of the musical Bye Bye Birdie. I played Kim.
Our little company always gave one performance featuring the understudies, so my understudy, Kacey Camp, took over for me. I sat in the audience to enjoy the show.
I watched Kacey stomp my performance into the dust. She acted better, she sang better, she danced better. She was lively, gave dull lines a funny spin. She sparkled.
And she really enjoyed herself.
I never felt comfortable performing, but let me brag about my wide vocal range: I made eyeglasses vibrate whenever I hit that high A at the end of the “Ed Sullivan” song. I plumbed contralto depths.
But I was not into it, and just because you can hit those notes doesn’t mean you should.
I didn’t even want the Kim role, the part of a pop idol-obsessed teenager. I didn’t even act like a teenager when I was a teenager.
The director called my family and asked my parents to talk me into auditioning because they were sure there was no one else in town suited for the part.
Then there was my understudy, singing, dancing, and acting like a dream. I had had weeks and weeks to practice the same role, and I wasn’t half as good.
I finished out my little role for the rest of the run, and that was that. I didn’t have the drive or ability to succeed as a pro performer, and I never auditioned for anything again.
Kacey became a professional actress with stage, TV, and film credits.
I became a cartoonist.
I never missed performing music in front of people. If I want to sing, I warble in the shower.
12 years of training – including summer music academy and private lessons – down the tubes.
I can sing anytime I want. No one can stop me.
If you want to make pictures or write stories, no one can stop you.
You do not need to be a pro to be happy. The pursuit of the pro career for which some people simply are not suited has led many people to great unhappiness. I was not suited for a career in music, despite 12 long years of banging away at it.
Know thyself.
It isn’t a question of whether or not this is something you want to do: the question is, can you make a living at it?
You don’t have to make a living at art to enjoy making art. Give yourself the freedom to make art without the burden of art making you.
By the way, Kacey Camp and I have been very good friends ever since.
What’s the story, Morning Glory?
What’s the tale, Nightingale?
Oh, so right!
My “revelation” was not so dramatic. In 9th grade, I’d been planning for three years already to go into fashion design. Then in a class I had to research “a career” (obviously the expectation was that the student would research the one they wanted to pursue): education, starting out positions, career path, expected income. So I researched fashion design — and found the biggest set back to me emotionally: I’d spend several years doing illustrations of other people’s designs. It made me stop and think.
I realized I did not have the temperament to spend the day at the drawing board day after day, doing illustrations of other people’s designs. And it also ruled out commercial art. I realized I wanted to do art when I wanted to do it. Like you and singing, Colleen, I can do it when it suits me.
I did continue taking art classes through school after that – to please myself and polish my skills. But I knew it would not make me happy as a day-job – in fact, my joy in doing artwork would probably be killed by having it as a day-job.
Writing, though, that I just plain love doing! On demand, or for myself. The act itself pleases me. Getting paid for it… it’s almost secondary.
But don’t get me wrong — I’d LOVE to be paid (more) for it.
See you later, Alligator.
In a while, Crocodile.
haha, I was going to be in Bye Bye Birdie too. I got cast as the mother in law. This after two other plays where I’d been (type) cast as the overbearing fat lady. I had high hopes that in a play FULL of teenagers I’d be allowed to play something fun, but no. Once I found out I won the role, I quit the play and never tried out again.
I’ve had people tell me I was chosen because “I was the only one talented enough to play the tough parts” but whatever. Up to that point I loved drama. I only ever tried out for one thing, that was an open casting call for the touring company of Les Mis about 15 years ago, and I went mostly because I just wanted to do it, not because I was expecting anything from it. I was there among ten thousand hopefuls, all vastly more talented and hungrier than I. I got typed out before I could even open my mouth. And I was cool with it.
It’s okay. I prefer to pull the strings than dance with Pinnochio anyway. Writing may not win me anything (else) or replace other parts of my life that are not so cool, but it’s the one thing I do best, and better than most; those who see my work like it a lot. I’d rather that then spend my life as the World’s Most Talented Bookkeeper or Greatest Claims Adjuster.
I’ve always thought you had a healthy attitude about your work. You really love it, and you have passion, but you also take you responsibilities as a self-supporting adult seriously.
Frankly, I would have loved to play something like the mother-in-law in Bye Bye Birdie. I never got character parts. I thought my voice better suited to roles like Rosie, but I always got parts suited for short, blonde girls.
I would have loved to play Ado Annie in Oklahoma, but true to form, I got Laurie. That part has one of the most miserable solos in musical theater: Many a New Day. I have a recording of me singing that last note “Many a blue moon will shine BEEEfore I DOOOOOO,” so far off key it will make you shiver with nails running down a chalk board chills.
BTW, I wanted to make another point. Maybe I should in a separate post:
But I remember something Val Trullinger once wrote on this board along the lines of how there is not force on Earth more destructive than a frustrated creator.
Some angry creators have a tendency to project their disappointment onto the industry in unproductive and inappropriate ways.
They expected their art career to make them happy: it does not. They conflate normal disappointments and wounds into major traumas. I suppose I can’t really get into this without making specific examples which would make some people very, very angry with me. But I have seen some people go on rages about things they claim have happened to them. What I observe is no injury above or beyond the norm. But when the high expectations they have for their dream careers don’t materialize – whatever the injury is – it seems far more painful.
Then again, art and entertainment attracts dramatic people. I guess a dramatic spin on injury would be normal course for some.
When I say “injury” I refer to the narcissistic injury that is standard for this business: rejection, criticism, that sort of thing. Sometimes it can be hard to separate professional rejection from personal injury. And if you can’t make that distinction, you are in for a world of hurt.
Everybody feels the sting. How you handle it makes or breaks you.
I recall disappointing my high school art teacher when I decided not to pursue art studies. Instead I opted for the hard sciences – Chemistry, Physics and Math.
I did love art but I did not enjoy the assignments we were given in art class. Most of all I enjoyed solving problems, figuring things out. My other love was chess. I used skip classes in high school to play chess. I was a decent chess player and even enjoyed my ‘five minutes of fame’ as a result. I was never going to be world class as I played on a tactical level rather than strategic, viewing the chess board as a series of complex problems to be solved.
Anyway, I became an engineer. I had considered research scientist but I felt I would be bored being stuck in the lab day after day.
Throughout my career, I have had a variety of positions and I found I was always happiest when I was working on projects.
Except for my disastrous attempt last month in the bar at the Westin, it’s been over 25 years since I put pencil to paper.
Instead, I fulfilled my love of art through the appreciation of the works of others.
Many an art class has ended the aspirations of young artists.
I hope you don’t stop drawing again! ‘Aint it fun?
It is fun!
And I am determined to improve on my last effort.
The closest I got to “Bye Bye Birdie” was the Sixth Grade. Before being shipped off to junior high (7-8), us sixth graders gave a farewell performance to the entire school. One of the numbers, including me, involved various singers dressing up as senior citizens and performing “Kids”. (Yeah, our music teacher had a wicked sense of humor.) I still remember the lyrics, and frankly, I think our staging was much better than Paul Lynde’s!
(Darn… now I’ve got “Colleen DorAnn-Margaret” stuck in my head!)
Many years ago, I came across a copy of “Nuts”, a business profile of Southwest Airlines. From then on, I have always tried to have fun with whatever job I have, even if it involves a little bit of irony. An example, from working as a bookseller:
Customer: “Excuse me, do you work here?”
Me (wearing turquoise apron with bookstore name screened in big white letters): “I try not to.”
Actually, I apply that philosophy to life in general. Of course, I laugh at the absurdity of life a little too quickly, which can be socially awkward in some situations.
As for art, I was good enough for my Eighth Grade teacher to suggest I study further. However, geared towards higher education, I instead focused on the Important Stuff. I took a few classes in college (paper making, book binding, life drawing), but I’m more an idea person than a thing person. Maybe I’ll explore Lego sculpturing…
‘Colleen DorAnn-Margaret’ – LOL!
I love it!
Arlnee — Your story of being “typecast” brought back unpleasant memories of my grade school Christmas pageant. Everyone, including the teacher, pushed me to take the role of Santa Claus. I knew perfectly well that it was only because I was the fattest kid in class, and in a rare moment of standing up for myself, I flatly refused. Even at that age, I knew an insult when I heard one.
Oh, dear.
BTW, someone on another board had an epic meldown about this post. I think he took it personally. I have no idea who he is, so it’s not.
And his posts are now gone. I guess he put down the beer.
Dammit, Colleen!
Stop articulating feelings I didn’t even know I had!
I can’t imagine why anyone would take the post personally and have a melt down about it. Unless he’s a artist that notoriously flakes out on commissions and thought you were talking about him. In which case it would only be his guilty conscious firing off.
But the fact remains, if you cannot be pleased in and of yourself, nothing outside yourself can – long-term – provide that satisfaction you crave. Not a comics career, not the “job of your dreams”, not “having that ONE dream relationship.” But you also have to be honest with yourself to accept that reality.
@JKCarrier: *fistbump*
@torsten: I also try to make what I’m doing for a paycheck fun, and funny. Because I’ve learned something interesting and important: telling people important stuff like how to claim the thing they just bought and when to pick it up by and whatnot, they do not listen. It’s like the pre flight instructions about exit rows and it’s all blahblahblah to them. Unless you make it funny. People remember funny things.
I get asked the dress code to a show or restaurant, I tell them it’s clothing mandatory. THere’s a pause, then they laugh, then I tell them jackets preferred or whatever. But you better bet they’ll remember that. Or they’ll ask me if we take Amex or Discover and I’ll tell them that if it has money on it we’ll take any card they got. Again, they laugh, and they pay attention.
I very rarely get complaints that I didn’t tell someone something important (which I actually did, but they just zoned out and ignored it) because people remember what I tell them. And it makes my job a lot easier if I don’t have the hostile “I want what you’re selling but I hate paying for it” vibes coming at me, because I’m giving them a free five minute comedy routine during their purchase.
Writing does not pay the rent. It barely pays the coffee. But what I do make the money at, I make bearable, if not enjoyable.
@colleen re: meltdown
you really have to screencap faster, darnit! How are we supposed to enjoy the wank if you don’t bring it to us?
I think he may have had a little too much July 4 celebration and had commentor’s remourse.
Oddly some FB comments also disappeared. Including the huge honking post I was writing. Grr.
@ Gail: Thanks for dropping in!
I really, REALLY don’t get the melodrama over the day job thing. What an emotional burden some people carry.
About 15 years ago, my income was dead low, and I took the plunge: I applied for a day job.
Then I got so many art gigs, I was unable to take it!
Realizing I don’t need to make art for a living took the pressure off making art for a living and my career got a lot better after that. I was more relaxed about It All.
I don’t see any qualitative emotional difference between the dreaded day job and doing art jobs I don’t really like for money. I consider that “day job,” anyway.
I have a farm: as someone who was elbow deep in compost and manure not 24 hours ago, I really don’t get people who think they are too good for a day job.
Here was an earlier post that touched on this:
http://adistantsoil.com/2009/08/28/work-is-good-12/
The only problem I have with this is that I do it, or I don’t. To make a living at something else and doing this as a hobby, wont work for me. I’m on or off.
The inability to compartmentalize is a problem for many creators.
It’s a problem for creators who can’t be creative and, simultaneously ,effective at handling their necessary business concerns.
You have to be able to do both well if you are a professional. If you can’t, you have to team with someone you can trust to handle your business. That’s harder than having a day job, trust me on that.
Personally, having to do something else – farm labor, for example – can make me ache to get to the drawing board.
At first I found it a welcome break, and would happily mow, and rake for six hours a stretch. It was easier than facing that drawing board, sometimes.
But now that I have to muck and row, there are days I avoid my hoe.
And frankly, being able to create on cue, even in less than ideal circumstances, separates the pro from the semi-pro or talented amateur. Many creators have day jobs. Most do, actually.
Bit late to the discussion, but here’s my 2¢:
“The only failure is in not being able to lead a happy, fulfilling life. You don’t need a pro career to do that.”
Many people labor under the assumption that they need to be pros in order to be happy for a couple of reasons. The first is the overblown value our culture puts on money, and the conflation of money with worth. If you can’t make money doing something, it’s often not seen as a worthwhile pursuit. How many of us have had a conversation with family that runs along the lines of, ‘But how do you plan on making a living from art? How about you go into a nice, safe, stable job instead?’ If you manage to make a living and support yourself through your art, that’s very validating.
Then there’s scheduling: if you’re a pro, it’s assumed you’ll be doing nothing else but the work — and who wouldn’t want to do the thing they love 24/7? (The minute you find a grand passion that involves nothing but the grand passion, call me and let me know. I’ll switch.) Time spent doing other things to support the grand passion never seems to be factored in, when we’re dreaming — and yet the other, meta-stuff can easily take up just as much time as a day job does. No one ever tells you that, though. No one dreams of long hours in the studio spent sifting through receipts and 1099s, or looking for where you stuck that important scrap of paper with an even more important phone number on it. (Ahem.)
In Creativity for Life, Eric Maisel makes a distinction between different ways of being creative in one’s life: artful living, art-filled living, and art-committed life. The first way is to be imaginative and resourceful in every aspect of one’s life; the second describes a life full of thought-provoking, beautiful things, and a love for them; but the third is the life of someone who’s chosen to devote themselves to creating in a particular domain. They’re not mutually exclusive, nor is one better than the others. But the art-committed life brings a very specific set of challenges that the other two don’t. It raises the stakes on your dream and your life by whole orders of magnitude. It’s that sense of having put everything on the line, I think, that differentiates the amateur from the pro.
That’s the big dramatic move, that’s the stereotype of the artist in the garret, and that’s the myth — that only the ones who have gone pro are doing something worthwhile. However, there’s a lot to be said for the emotional investment that comes with making that shift in one’s thinking.
I’ve noticed that it’s the people who haven’t yet made that internal commitment, and are frustrated creators, who are so fearsomely destructive. All that energy needs to go into writing, or acting, or painting — but instead goes into generating drama and tearing others down, as a distraction.
Resistance, man. It’s real, and it’s ugly.
Absolutely wonderful comments and links.
“…it’s the people who haven’t yet made that internal commitment, and are frustrated creators, who are so fearsomely destructive. All that energy needs to go into writing, or acting, or painting — but instead goes into generating drama and tearing others down, as a distraction.”
Winwinwin.
The worst problems you have as a pro will not be dealing with the big boys. The problems come from dealing with some people on the edge. Close, but not enough. And not happy about it. And without enough self awareness to handle their problems effectively. Some of these people have, or had careers. They are not where they want to be, and lash out.
Any creator who isn’t willing to face the reality that a major portion of the professional creative life is business papers, and taxes, and negotiations, and salesmanship does not understand what it means to be a pro.
You don’t get to sit around and create all day.
If it is that difficult to handle a day job and create on the side, there is no way you will be able to handle the creative business.
A hard lesson I learned self publishing: I did not have any help when I started out and tried to manage all the mail, packing shipping, dealing with printers, etc. I spent more time dealing with all that than I did drawing. I had a hell of a hard time turning one off to do the other. Not to mention winding down from the long tours to work.
There has never been a time in my life when all I got to do was create. Maybe on a hard deadline when I was working really long hours: 100 hours a week sometimes.
When I came off deadline jag, I was blown from the stress, and had to face a mound of papers, mail, and editors on other projects. I recall more than 20 boxes of mail stacked up in my office. I got a foot of mail a day when I self published.
In the past, I filed taxes late, paid bills late, and missed some important deadlines because stuff was buried under stuff, I was deadline swamped and forgot, or I just couldn’t snap out of the drawing to focus on the business. I grossly overpaid taxes due to not having my receipts in order. I misplaced scripts and reference and art in the days before internet and email. Years later, my art is still not in order (but if you read this blog, you know I became almost neurotically tidy. Learned my lesson, I did.)
It’s a business, and the business part is not fun.
I’ve never been more happy writing than I am now because I came to the point of seeing that it can not be about getting paid work for me but about getting better with each project. If I make money with my projects or get paid work that’s great but my skill level is not near a level of driving myself crazy making it my life focus.
Plus I find the more I add to my life the better I get as a writer and really tend to get more writing done when I’m working a full time job outside of writing?
I’ve always loved writing but I think from an early age I did it with too many stars in my eyes and not enough open eyes to getting better no matter the limitations I have.
I think your point is really much more general than that: if you’re not happy, and the cause of the unhappiness is not something actively painful (e.g., disease, grinding poverty, an abusive relationship), no addition to your life is likely to provide a magical cure to your unhappiness. Far too many people think that if only they had X – money, fame, a spouse – life would be perfect. And yet for some reason even after they manage to get X, many of these people don’t find the happiness they expected. There are some people who seem to be generally happy even in circumstances that wouldn’t seem to warrant it, and some people who seem determined to be miserable no matter how good their lives seem to be to an outside observer. (Think of the poem “Richard Cory.”) Arlnee sounds like someone who can take even a menial job and find the fun in it.
I appreciate your unusually clear-eyed view of art as a profession. I see much the same thing from the musical side. I’ve heard it said that you should only be a professional musician if you absolutely can’t do anything else. (“What’s the difference between a professional musician and a large pizza? Unlike a professional musician, a large pizza can feed a family of four.”)
Happily, I can do something else, and get paid for it a hell of a lot better for it than I could even were I good enough to get into the New York Philharmonic, which I’m not – I’m good enough to get paid a little bit for playing, but not good enough to support myself at it. And although some people have a hard time understanding it, software engineering is also a creative field. Despite all the efforts of the Software Engineering Institute to turn it into a repeatable manufacturing process, I continue to maintain that good design is an art. I get the same satisfaction after producing an elegant design as I imagine you get after producing a good work of art. But I would have a much less happy life without my musical evenings and weekends.
You do have one advantage over me: your work is solitary. You can do it out in the boonies. Except for pianists and singer-guitarists, most good music-making needs some collaboration. I moved from the midwest to the DC area in large part because I couldn’t find enough good players to make the kind of music (chamber music) that I wanted to play. Up here, there are community orchestras, choruses, and theaters, many of them surprisingly good. I play in such an orchestra, and with a Gilbert & Sullivan company. You could, if you were so inclined, join such an organization if you lived in a large enough population center. Perhaps it’s just as well you don’t, however. I suspect Work Bird would disapprove of the distraction.
This is a terrific post.
Thank you so very much for adding your thoughts.
I’m sure other folks out there have had this experience: after years of fighting a serious problem, the problem goes away. After a brief euphoria, you don’t know what the heck to do with yourself without the fight.
And then you get depressed because you have lost direction…
Work Bird will be watching me closely in the coming months. I will be living in Washington, DC this fall, and a part of me is terrified how I will handle having so many things around me to distract me.
Not to mention resisting the shopping.
The price of housing around here may help you with resisting the shopping.
But Work Bird will be very cross to learn about all the distracting things to do in and around DC that are free of charge.
I have developed the very bad habit of too much web surfing, and wonder if I will simply swap web surfing for museum hopping.
I’ve started disconnecting my ethernet cord again. It’s ridiculous.
I’m not sure what the biggest DC area shopping temptation is, but Potomac Mills comes to mind.