Dear Artists,
Dear visionaries, dear dreamers, dear Us. Dear creatives striving to foster connection and healing, stir emotion, and make trying times manageable for ourselves and others while working demanding jobs, caring for families, and (sometimes trying, sometimes failing to) nurture ourselves.
Your vision is valuable. Your art is worth having space held for it, being nurtured with practice and learning, being paid adequately for the knowledge of space, color, form, musical notes, words, and cadence.
You, as a vessel for this often overlooked magic, are valuable. You and your energy are worth nurturing, protecting, considering.
Some of us may have been trying to balance being a conventionally contributive member of society with building our talent, our bodies of work. Please be patient and understanding with yourself if it’s taking you longer to get your art and/or your artist Self where you want it to be.
At the same time, be sure that you are protecting your energy by allocating your energy fairly. We are mired in hustle culture, meaning that skipping meals, working nights and weekends all the time, making your job your main focus are all the only combo that equals working hard.
Don’t fall for it, especially not if you are an artist. Nothing makes us wither and fall back from our goals faster than putting ALL our energy toward a company’s “bottom line.”
Working hard and taking pride in your work can happen in a balanced way. There are supportive workplaces and environments that will see their employees as human beings full of potential in and out of their workspaces and yes, they’ll expect great things from you, but it won’t be at the cost of your physical, mental, and artistic health.
I have worked for some of those places. They exist, and they thrive as you thrive. They know this.
Look for those places. Look for those bosses. Ask the right questions, observe (we’re artists, this is one of our main talents!), and heed your gut before accepting. And always protect the time you require to create, it absolutely is sacred and essential to your well-being. Work to live, sure. So many of us have to, right? But live to create and be lit up from the inside.
Your vision is not collateral. It is cosmically important, and so are you.