Naturally, as I progress through college, the question of career choice keeps getting brought up, and I’ve found myself torn between “the practical” and “the arts,” a situation most other creatives like me end up falling into. It’s the nature of our world; in our highly industrial society, with less and less of a focus on arts as a “valid” or “profitable” career option, up-and-coming artists have to make the call. Do they want to take the plunge as an artist, and fully devote themselves to their craft? Or do they want to settle, and find a more “sensible,” traditionally profitable career?
I’ve always been a writer, ever since I was little. Now in college, I’m honing my writing focus on fiction novels, memoir, and journalism. For me, there would be no better life than writing all-day, and having my work published out into the world for everyone to read. At the end of the day, that’s my dream.
The question for me and many other creatives is “What do we value more?” In the human quest for happiness, some things are prioritized more than others. If the things you can buy with money make you happy, setting for a less spiritually rewarding, but more monetarily rewarding job may make you happy. If you hate the idea of being trapped doing something you aren’t fully passionate in, maybe you can give up more of your material or experiential wants that need more money.
I’m lucky that I have an example in my life of a person who has managed to strike the balance between a business-minded side and an artistic side. My mother is full-time business woman, passionate part-time artist—but she’ll soon be full-time artist, passionate retiree. She’s been in corporate command chains for all her career, but her passion has always been sewing and painting. In recent years she’s spent nearly all her free time on her artistic passions, costuming local plays and creating a side-business selling her art. When she retires, she’ll be able to completely dedicate herself to painting, the thing she’s most interested at her current age. While she enjoyed the competitiveness and the drive when she started her career, it isn’t something that interests her now, which is another factor to consider. What we may enjoy as a career now may not be something we’ll stick with forever, our interests grow and change, but with a strong enough supportive foundation, we can have more flexibility later in life.
So what have I been doing to push myself towards a career? As of now, I’ve turned to publishing. Publishing is a vast industry, a craft all on its own, that relies on critical thinking, business know-how, marketing, visual artistry, negotiations, and a lot of reading. I get a lot of satisfaction from it. It’s essentially making a career out of the revision/editing process of creative writing. Publishing careers can range from small offices making journals to mega-corporate chains-of-command publishing big-name novels—and all have a place in the world of literature and the spread of storytelling. To me, publishing strikes a balance between honing my craft in writing while obtaining a more traditional, climbing career; but who knows if that’s something that I’ll be satisfied with even five years from now?
But there’s always questions. Everyone has them. Do you want to live in a specific place? Some careers simply can’t support more expensive living locations. Do you want to eat fancy food, buy expensive clothes? You might have to give those up, but find more happiness in your work. It’s a push-pull, and a debate constantly being thought-of by artists in college. In a time most formative to our character and worldliness, discovering what will truly make us happy for the rest of our lives seems night impossible, but there is no better time to find that answer than now.
