Following Your Dream or Just Surviving?

If you are an artist like me who is trying to make a part-time living at it, you may occasionally be subjected to well-meaning friends who tell you things like, "Why don't you get a real job (not art-related) that acutally comes with benefits?" When you are a struggling artist, you sometimes do have to take part-time non art-related jobs that just help make ends met, which is what I do. But where do you draw the line? What if you need to take a second part-time job, temporarily, due to some extra financial needs that come up. Eventually, your ability to make a living as an artist becomes severely compromised and you are left with little to no time for it. So much of who I am revolves around art that to be without it for any length of time is torture for me. So far, I have not had to get a second part-time job, but there have been times I've been close to going that route.

One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes is "Passage For Trumpet." It's about a poor man by the name of Joey, who is following his dream to make a living as a musician playing the trumpet, but he has had some set backs and is struggling. One day he accidentially steps off a curb and gets hit by a car. He ends up in a kind of limbo between life and death. Joey notices that no one around him can see or hear him. Then he meets the Angel Gabriel, who is an expert trumpet musician. Joey askes Gabriel, "Am I dead?" and Gabriel answers, "No, you're not dead. The people around you--they are the ones that are dead because they are not following their dream like you are." (Not an exact quote but that's the main idea.) The people around Joey had given up on their dreams and were just making a living, just surviving, just existing.

I am willing to make occasional compromises but I don't want to go back to just surviving, just existing. I have been reading the story of Leavenworth, Washington which is called the Miracle Town because it almost never happened and was on the edge of bankruptcy before it became a Bavarian Town. The author of the book, Ted Price, who also helped build Bavarian Leavenworth, says, "Artist's and visionaries are celebrated, but rarely are they understood when they first appear in a community. No one with a creative mind is ever received openly and gladly by the world because original ideas mean that people's attitudes must change and their lives will never be the same as before. A radical change means we have to be willing to let go, to risk losing some control over our lives, to embrace the unknown in life."

Abraham Maslow, a psychologist, said, "One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again. Fear must be overcome again and again."