Art is hard

Art is hard. Not like math is hard, or fighting a bear with only a lasso and your wits is hard- in that the actual work is tough to do (though that's often the case as well). No, art is hard because art is the ultimate unrequited love. We give everything we have and everything we are into it and sometimes, oftentimes, it rebukes us fully and completely. Those of us who are passionate (re: stupid)  enough to pursue it as a career know this full well. Despite talent, ability, and sometimes even drive, the road to success is a crap-shoot. The reality is for every success story there are 100 failures so anyone with a brain can reason that your chances of failing are far higher than succeeding. Saying you're starting a career in the arts is like looking up at a cliff, watching 20 people fall to their deaths and saying "Yeah, that's for me" and starting to fucking climb. Fledgling artists have fears, all the time, every day, and that is made worse with the knowledge that on some level it's all self inflicted.

Why do we do it? Maybe it's optimism or faith in our own ability. Maybe it's blind ambition. For me it's the simple fact that doing what I do as someone in the arts is the only thing that makes me truly happy. It's the only thing that satisfies me and it's the only thing I want to do.

"But Jake you don't know that, you haven't tried everything."

"True but I've already found my thing. That's like looking for your glasses, putting them on and then continuing the search. Why would you keep looking?"

That being said, earning money is a necessity that only becomes more and more necessary as time goes by and your life expands. A functioning adult, something I'm aiming to be one day, earns a living. So getting a real job, is that failure? You aren't making enough to live on from your art so that's a fail right? I have no idea.

Every artist decides what defines success and failure for them. Some simply think by doing it, they're a success. Some think if they have that job and no other they're a success. Some want fame and loads of cash. Some only want recognition from their peers. Some simply want to say the one thing that they've been burning to say their whole lives. And because the definitions are so fluid its easy to feel like you're copping out or giving up. I'm going back to school to get a degree in teaching and some of the time it feels like I gave up. I'm still writing, still acting, still going on auditions and even thinking about trying stand up comedy but because I'm officially "getting something to fall back on" I feel like it's over before it even begins. I don't know if that's the case or not, maybe that's for me to decide.

But seriously, what the hell do I know?