Even writers, artists, and the like are not their jobs.
When your primary vocation in life is one of the arts, it feels like that’s the centerpiece of your identity. Even when you work to keep a separation between your personal and professional selves, your art is a defining quality of who you are. In my experience this is true for every writer, speaker, sculptor, and painter, just to name a few examples.
Beneath the artist is a living, breathing person. Ergo, you have needs and desires that your art can’t fulfill. That’s because nobody at all has only one role in life.
We all have a multitude of roles. I brand myself professionally as a storyteller. Outside of my professional self, I have many other jobs. I’m also a husband, brother, son, teacher, student, thumb-monkey to cats, housekeeper, and a myriad of other roles and jobs I could name. Each role is unique and potentially completely disconnected from any other job.
Over-identifying with your vocation can create problems like separation of duties, balancing personal, professional, social, and private time. This becomes especially challenging when you go from hobbyist or part-time artist to full-time.
In the words of author Stephen Pressfield, from his brilliant The War of Art,
“To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro it’s his vocation.”
When you think about it, it’s very logical. Do lawyers identify first and foremost as members of their profession? Project managers? Teachers? By and large, no. The arts are the same.
Why is this important?
One of the biggest issues experienced by professional artists of every kind is a form of disregard. “Arts” are often considered a side hustle, hobby, and given very little importance. That’s why funding the arts in schools tends to get cut for things like sports and STEM. (For the record, I am not deriding sports and STEM because they serve their own purposes and do good in their own ways).
Taking arts to the next level and making a career of it? Your vocation? You have a backup plan, right? Given how many (writers, painters, sculptors, chefs) fail, you have a fallback lined up, right? I know I’m not the only one to hear those types of statements when you mention what you do.
This is why it’s all too easy to over-identify with your arts vocation. You aren’t just an artist, you’re a warrior. As a pro, you’re fighting the good fight for recognition and legitimacy – and not just for you but all the similar artists out there.
This, FYI, is why artists aren’t in competition. All the other sci-fi writers out there, traditionally and independently published, are my comrades, not competitors. We’re also much stronger as a force together than on our own.
Telling people you’re an artist often requires qualifiers. Do any other jobs demand that? None I’ve ever held. When I worked in tech support nobody questioned my choice or suggested I should have a fallback. The same goes for administrative assistant, retail management, and paralegal work (all of which I did when striving to fit the molds of societal expectation).
As much as sharing your not-so-secret identity as an artist is not just for you, but others like you, you are still not your vocation and separation is important.
You are and are not your vocation
Storyteller suits me because it covers more than the work I do as an author. It covers my audiobooks, my former podcast, and to some degree the website work I do.
Outside of the professional, I’m still a storyteller. But that doesn’t take the same approach. For example, after more than 30 years in the medieval reenactment society that’s my main hobby and friend circles, I have a ton of “No shit, there I was,” stories. Having taken some interesting trips and had unique experiences, I love to share those with people, too. Storytelling is a part of multiple elements of who I am.
However, the professional “Storyteller” versus personal storyteller is not the same. It is via that separation of vocation that I can be (and am) a business. It is in the practice of my vocation that I write and publish novels and audiobooks. Outside the vocation, I’m a storyteller to entertain, make people laugh, create connections and community, and so on.
When you become your professional vocation, you can lose yourself. That can cause issues for your mental, emotional, spiritual, and eventually physical health, wellness, and wellbeing. Why? Because everybody has multiple elements that make them whole, and balance is important.
You have a professional, personal, private, and social life. Recognizing this goes a long way toward finding contentment and even happiness. While your vocation might tie into more than one of these, maintaining the knowledge of separation, and that you are and are not your vocation, is a mindfulness practice for balance and self-awareness in a crazy, often backasswards world.
Please keep creating and making your art. Practice your vocation. But also, please take care of yourself while doing your art, for your greater good.
Thanks for reading.
As I share my creative journey with you every week, please consider this: How are you inspired and empowered to be your own creator, whatever form that takes?
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