Small Fish. Small Pond.

I often meet with young artists who tell me they are going to move because their town is some total shithole. They aren’t wrong per se, but I always give them the same advice… stay home until it hurts.

Don’t get me wrong. I see the move to a big city like Chicago, New York or Los Angeles as a really positive career step. If you want to work in the arts it is in some ways inevitable, but when you are starting out these moves can be costly and demoralizing.

Conventional wisdom is that you must move to a bigger city for bigger gains. That the goal should be the broadest possible audience, but moving to a larger market without a body of experience leaves you at the starting gate. It becomes easy to feel lost and rudderless, you shut down and get defined by your drudgery. The first step should be staying put until it’s absolutely unbearable, building your network locally before drowning out in that larger pond.

What your no name town affords you is the ability to develop a reputation. You can see your backyard as a chance to build a portfolio or resume of your impact; all the while saving money and time with a lower overhead and less competition. It’s a blank slate: do pop-up gallery shows, develop an app in you bedroom, book benefit concerts at VFW halls, start an all ages theater space, make a lo-fi horror film with your friends. All achievable career fodder and dues paid without ever leaving your front door.

Then there is the added benefit of angst. Nothing can fuel that urge to change the world like some dead-end small town rage. The want to escape the mundane and morbid hometown blues. People write songs about it . It’s a real thing.

All this advice comes with a cautionary tale. Yes, stay home, be the best, make great work, explode at the seams. That output will be your calling card when you finally make the move, but please don’t get stuck. Your retreat must have an expiration date and while you are staying local, your ambition must not. Your urge to escape is the wave that can carry your talent out of the shadows and onto that larger stage. It is a fine line; you must be brave enough to want to change the world yet patient enough to wait to see your path to do it.