Meet the Maker: Day 6

Need to catch up?
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5

Day 6: Full-time or part-time

I’ve kind of been avoiding doing this post today. The answer doesn’t seem as easy as an either/or response for me.

I mentioned a couple days ago that as an adult it took me a few years to come around back to creating again. When deciding on college degrees, I ended up trying to play it safe. My educational background isn’t in art, but in the social sciences. I have degrees in Liberal Arts, Psychology, and Paralegal Studies. My jobs over the last 10 years have ranged from order fulfillment to a records specialist at a police department to a coding process coordinator for a medical organization.

During this time, my art started out as non-existent and then developed as a hobby. While working in my coordinator position full-time I began working my art as a part-time business. It eventually got to the point that I realized that I wanted more time to focus on art and working 45-50 hours a week plus taking my own time to study and get certified wasn’t allowing me to live the type of life I wanted. I then made the decision to resign and focus solely on art for most of 2018.

There’s a lot of lessons that I could share about the year (maybe sometime I’ll write a longer blog post about it), but something that resonated with me was a part of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic where she talks about demanding the muse to make you money. It’s an interesting part of the book (the whole book is good). I’ve found that I’m able to be more creative when I’m not fixating as much on whether something will sell (or has). Now I still work my art business full-time and it’s my primary focus but I also have a part-time job on the side that helps to alleviate the financial pressure a little bit while my business is still growing.