The Life of An Unemployed Artist

I was at a wedding recently, and my stomach wasn’t feeling too great. The thought of doing booty scoops to any of the songs on the typical wedding DJ’s playlist sent chills up my spine. I could not trust my body to perform even a side to side sway in the vein of “Uptown Funk”, so I chose to stand by the bar and strike up conversations instead. This was the best/worst choice of the night because it lead me to facing some harsh truths about my life as an artist but it also allowed me to fill the void of connection due to my lifestyle as an actor.

Now, the cool thing about this wedding is that the groom was friends with a lot of young artist types (some would label them hipsters, but that’s a narrow label for people that were clearly artistic hipsters — it’s totally different), so, conversation flowed easily. Pretty soon, we got past the pleasantries and the “what do you do” b.s. and delved into what really meant something in our lives: our lifestyle. Lifestyle is everything, yet some people dance around the reality of how their lifestyle dictates how they look at the world. After talking with some of these fellow artists, I had an epiphany: artists who do independent work tend to have an isolated existence; this leads to searching for human interaction, but because many of us work from home, we turn to the Internet. And this is where the trouble starts.

Some of you fellow artists reading this might be saying, “But I have friends! It’s not like I don’t interact with people! This sounds like it’s your problem, lady.” Of course it’s my problem. And I have friends too!! But if a lot of us are spending our time on the Internet trying to find humanity, we are all in trouble. The Internet is where many of us interact with humanity throughout the week outside of our limited, brief experiences such as walking our dogs, making purchases, and being stuck in traffic with those who seem to have forgotten that turn signals are mandatory. People who work 9–5 jobs in an office, on the other hand, tend to be busy interacting with people all day — plus, all those minuscule interactions over the week add up, and before they know it, those who work in a 9–5 job have interacted with people so much that they may actually be sick of people. But they are also seeing the best of people up close (along with the worst, I imagine), so they may get a pretty balanced perspective in our flawed, but inspiring humanity. Plus, happy hour, am I right? Yeah… that is not the case for artists. Many of us are freelancers. Happy Hour is usually not a thing we “do”. Many of us have deadlines, or have to drive somewhere work related at 5pm, or even begin working in the evening. And, ok, I could argue that this goes for people who aren’t artists too. In fact, this could also be the case for anyone working from home; people with disabilities; stay at home moms; or anyone who has a lifestyle in which they have minimal interaction with people throughout the work week.

The other thing that I’ve noticed artists in particular experience though, is that we may go from job to job with sometimes (or often depending on the work) long stretches of time with no work at all. Sure, some people get a second job or are busy with volunteering and hobbies and barely look at TV or the Internet. But a lot of us have unpredictable work, which leads to a lack of consistency in our schedule and other activities become difficult to fit in when work could come at any moment. Hours will stretch in front of us and before we know it, we haven’t talked to another human being for 7 hours.

This is where the Internet comes in. Ah, yes, that smorgasbord of news, information, distraction, social networks, memes, videos, and a lot of weird conspiracy theory websites. What better way to connect with humanity? It’s literally all laid out in front of you! But while this may seem the obvious option, it’s a bit like when Satan showed Jesus “all the kingdoms of all the world and their glory”. Jesus was able to stave off the temptation of this kind of offering, but he’s freaking Jesus, for God’s sakes. We are far from Jesus. Instead, we have this thing called our lizard brain: it’s the source of our flight or flight instinct and holds all our most extreme emotional responses. But yeah, the lizard brain doesn’t really think things through, therefore, our lizard brains make a lot of shitty emotional choices. That’s why when many of us see a story that infuriates us, instead of ignoring it, we simply HAVE to look. And while positive stories and imagery such as puppies getting stuck in things and videos featuring a miniature kitchen that makes actual miniature food are inviting, we are often drawn to the darkness in society. Don’t believe me? Have a look at the home page of just about any news site (fake or real, whatever your palette enjoys), and count the number of negative stories. Got it? Now go back, and count the number of positive stories. There’s quite the numerical difference here, no? Now, go to a “fun” site; I’m thinking Buzzfeed, Facebook, Twitter, The Onion, Cracked, Snopes, The Borowitz Report, ESPN, Spin, Rolling Stone, Glamour, etc… and you will find that even those sites skew more heavily on stories tinged with negativity.

All of this leads to what I call the “Negativity Paradox”. Artists and freelancers want interaction so badly because it feels good to socialize (our caveman brain), but when we go on the Internet, we really are seeing the extremes of society and often it’s the most negative aspects of society that tend to stand out the most. This, I theorize, leads to artists feeling really low and believing that the world is a bad place and that people overwhelmingly, inherently evil. Obviously this is flawed black and white thinking, but I believe it’s prevalent in a lot of individuals. Which leads me to another part of my theory, which I really need to credit Tim Ferris for (he wrote the 4 Hour Workweek book and has a podcast of the same name). Tim Ferris went on the Freakonomics podcast earlier this year and discussed his battle with depression and anxiety. His theory on his own state of mind is that people who spend a lot of time in their heads and not working with their body, eventually suffer from more depression and anxiety than people who don’t. This inspired me to look at the times in my life in which I have experienced more anxiety/depression, and indeed, I could correlate those times to when I was most isolated and doing mostly independent, analytical work. He could be wrong, of course, but I believe it’s something to look at.

But there’s another side to this story that complicates the narrative that only some of us immerse ourselves in the Internet to stave off loneliness. Those same 9–5ers I mentioned earlier who interact with others daily can get sucked into the negativity of social media too, but they may do it at work or after work. And why? Maybe it’s because relationships at work and at home are messy, imperfect, and often exhaustingly frustrating to some. So these folks turn to the Internet too and thus, the future of loneliness lives in all of us. The Internet offers easy solutions, simple distractions, and a seemingly perfect experience that may or may not be tangible. All of this is a lie, however, since real life is always in the end going to be where all the good stuff lives.

But back to that wedding I went to… At one point, I was speaking with a lovely woman who is a painter. And we talked in length about whether artists are more drawn to politics and negativity in general. Her hypothesis based on an article she had read was that yes, artists do delve into negativity often, but that negativity obsession might lead to creative solutions of certain problems. Or that creativity and depressive states may indeed be inextricably linked. Maybe this is because as artists we do the kind of work that leaves us with long stretches of not making money and feeling unsure about our talent due to a lack of financial results. Maybe it’s because we are still a bit like monkeys and get pissed off when we see one monkey get grapes while we get cucumbers for doing the same work. Who knows!

So what’s the answer here? I don’t know! That’s why I wrote this. Hoping that maybe I’m missing a lot of information and the things my brain is telling me about are also a product of my lizard brain, and not the truth. Maybe the answer is meditation, volunteering, finding community, staying off the Internet, or changing jobs. Or a combination of all of those things? Or maybe artists lean more towards negativity than non-artists? I can’t really back the latter since it seems too much of a sweeping generalization with little scientific evidence to back it. Or maybe we all need more intimacy and must accept that intimacy and vulnerability in person involves more effort than life online, but it also yields better interpersonal results when approached healthfully. Do you have any information on this? I did find some information on the Internet (ironic!!) to back my theory. But feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section and let me know how very wrong (or right?) I am on this.