Written by Brielle Jobe

To be an artist or an entrepreneur is to be working all the time, enough to drive you, quite frankly, out of your mind!

Everyone may think about their jobs when they leave the office. Teachers think about lessons for the next day; accountants think on that one account that’s giving them particular trouble; flight attendants may think about their next route. But few jobs demand the mental workflow of being a creative or an entrepreneur. People starting their own business or writing their next book/play/symphony/etc. are constantly in the “idea phase.”

The end goal being to push those ideas out of their minds and into the real world.

But what does this mean for their work day? How many freelancers or business owners do you know where their house is a constant minefield of sticky notes, books, papers, pencils and pens sticking out from hair or from behind glasses? When you are entirely responsible for your own profit and career advancement (not to mention the careers of your team/employees), the only thing living rent-free is the plethora of details leasing a seemingly endless amount of brain space. You have to be in charge and aware of everything that goes on within and around your company or project.

Take the writer for example. Art is a reflection of the artist’s world and their experiences, therefore it can be said that every moment of an artist’s life is contributing to their work. They are constantly absorbing information — as are we all — but they are also constantly synthesizing it. Thinking about that new character or the message they really want to convey. Every shower thought, every sudden awakening in the night, every fragmented thought scribbled on a napkin is work. 
People in entrepreneurial positions are the same way. Every thought they have contributes or reflects their message and their values, and subsequently, their product or service — because it must. You can’t leave your work at the office when your success is dependent on every thought or idea inside your own brain. When your job is your vocation, your calling, you live your life by this passion. No matter the input, all the information is getting synthesized through filters in your brain to be focused into your service or product. You cannot stop, because that would bring your business — and your cash flow — to a halt.

The problem is, we can’t possibly pay ourselves for this time and this labor (believe us, we’ve tried).

So you have three options:

1. Find investors that will back your living expenses while you dedicate your entire self to the making of your art or your product/service.
2. Get additional jobs to cover expenses while you toil away on your own project, competing for energy and brain power to actually fulfill your real vision outside the constraints of the job you need to survive.
3. Monetize every step of the process along the way…

Obviously Number 1 is the ideal: being able to dedicate all working hours to the projects we love without any financial concern. But investors haven’t exactly been lining up to invest in indie movies, anthologies of poetry, or that next great symphony since the age of Medici. (You can read more about this specific plight of the artist in my article: Artists have been Preparing for this Fight.)

So that leaves Numbers 2 and 3.

Many artists and entrepreneurs opt for minimum wage/minimum effort day jobs as not to distract from their creative mission. Work a job 9–5 where you can just zone out, and take nothing home. But often, this still leaves you drained or it means working into the night since that’s when you finally have time for yourself and can get into that sweet, sweet work flow. Workable, but not exactly sustainable…

So then there’s option Number 3. Monetize everything. Are you a composer? Write jingles that you’d never use and sell them to marketing agencies. A visual artist? Doodle postcards in your spare time. Starting a small bakery? Organize discount bake sales every other weekend with the leftovers. This one often seems like the obvious choice: you’re doing a variation of what you love, and, huzzah, making money from it! But it often comes with the creative’s good ol’ faithful lover: burnout. 
When everything in your day becomes work for money, it can seem daunting but also soul-sucking to feed the corporate “Man” in order to feed your own stomach.

Burnout is all but inevitable because even when we take a “break” and go for a walk or enjoy that cup of coffee, we’re not really enjoying that empty space for ourselves. Because this “empty space” isn’t empty at all. We clear our mind only to let more ideas flood our senses. In fact, we need that empty space in order to fill it. When we give ourselves space to breathe, even this is contributing to our work. Even when we stop to think about our feelings — sounds mushy, right? — we are stopping to feel the thing that frustrates us or depresses us or brings us unadulterated joy. And, often, all those things we feel passionately about are our work.

So what are we to do?

Take jobs we hate? Cast aside our dreams? Waste away in this capitalist hell-scape we’ve come to call the status quo?

I don’t have the answer, but I can tell you my experience…

I take some from each column. I work for a logistical firm that backs my interests in improvisational workshops and trainings, and while the corporate world is not my home, it pays the bills. That along with an English teaching job that supplies additional income — and while it utilizes the skills of my actor’s heart, it really has nothing to do with my creative pursuits. But they supply money and help lessen the burden of the creative projects I take on. Leaving me to actively pursue performance as a comedian, an improviser, and most recently, a director and a playwright.

Additionally I have at least one hobby that I do for absolutely no other reason than fun, and that is playing billiards at the bar. It has nothing to do with anything, it’s not productive in any way, shape, or form. It’s just a fun puzzle to pull my brain away from everything else in my life and my work to have fun playing a game with my friends.

Is it the perfect system? 
My therapist would say no! So would my iron levels and the bags under my eyes…

But it’s what I can do to not fall apart, to not let the depression and suppression of my creative soul erode my insides (I know, I know, actors are so dramatic!). It’s what we do, it’s the life we’ve chosen. And it’s the life we’re stuck with until we can change society’s structure and convince those in power and in cashflow that creative ideas are more than worth sharing, they’re necessary for the betterment of everybody. 
Because creativity, whether artistic or innovative in business or technology, truly is what makes the world go ‘round.