Friday, August 19, 2011

Well, I'm fucked now

Temporarily fucked. Fucked until I can figure something out. Which is to say, temporarily fucked. I hope.

Here's the deal. I work three part-time jobs. I've lost one of them. I've lost the bronze-casting teaching gig I had at Harper College. This is the first  time ever the class has been canceled. Oh, there have been some skin-of-the-teeth moments these past few years where, after making some phone calls, I've managed to bump the roster up to bare minimum. But this semester, I wasn't able to get the minimum enrollment numbers.

Blame it on the economy, I suppose. Although I probably should have done a better job of marketing and networking. Salesmanship was never my strong point.

At any rate, the meager stipend I got from the teaching gig was that knife-edge margin I counted on  keeping me in the black. And now that is gone. Living paycheck to paycheck as it is, I've been congratulating myself for some time now on the brilliant career move I've made.

Being a starving artist sucks.

Whoever it was that came up with the whole "suffering for my art" shit should be made to suffer with  a good swift kick to the nads. This romantic asceticism bullshit is... bullshit.

Honestly, if I'm expected to be creative, I have a very hard time believing it will come through suffering.

Suffering doesn't aid the creative process. The act of being truly creative requires the luxury of play. And the luxury of play cannot occur if you are constantly worrying about where the money is going to come from. This constant worrying distracts me. Even worse, it stifles me. Even worse, it in no way uplifts or dignifies me.

Poverty is not noble.

Privation is not respectable.

Suffering for art produces some really shitty art.


5 comments:

  1. Well at least you have two other paychecks. I'm trying to get some teaching gigs going as we aren't getting any jobs. Nice of the republican retards (and no offense meant to the truly mentally disabled) to kill the slight improvement in the economy.

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  2. Yes, exactly what we need right now, some contractionary policies just so that the inconvenient negro can make a quick exit stage left.

    And, I'm sorry if I'm whined a little up there. Just a slight panic attack. The frontal lobes found some traction, and I'm thinking again. Anyone need some welding done?

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  3. hey, you know you don't make your email address available so I can't reply to your comments on my blog and I don't have one for you through other means so send it to me.

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  4. Welding, eh? going to join the union and start a new career path in plumbing?

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