I recently read a piece written by a contemporary of mine, Alan Parkinson, another writer from Sunderland that echoed some thoughts I’d been having recently and inspired me to try and articulate them as best I can.
We’ve all seen memes that jokingly contrast what your friends and family think you do when you’re self-employed, with what you actually do. The real joke is that it’s not actually uncommon for most people, even the people who might be paying you, to have very little idea of what you do. It’s understandable, a lot of creative work is varied and often doesn’t fit into a particular box or category, but the question you’ve been asking lately, is why does it matter?
Every day we trust professionals to do a whole variety of jobs without questioning, or expecting to change outcomes in any great way. When you sign up for Sky, you might try and get money off your TV bill, but you don’t ask them if they can also deliver a pizza. If a bakery has made a cake, you understand that the price of it is different to the price of making it yourself: the ingredients, the time, the skill, the previous experience… You know too, that if you ask if you can have the cake on the proviso that you’ll tell everyone it’s amazing (they’re bound to get more customers, right?) that you’ll be laughed out of the bakery. Why is it easier to ask a writer for a free article than it is to ask a taxi driver for a free ride? You wring your hands, you sigh, you write the reply. And then rewrite it. To say no is to run the gauntlet of firm-but-polite-ness in the hope that your irritation is masked by good cheer, lest you burn bridges.
Magpies will collect you and place you in their nest for a short while, until your shine dulls to their eyes. At which point you’ll be dropped over the edge without ceremony, echoes of false promises still ringing in your ears before reality hits.
Holiday time is an abstract concept. Weeks off have to be planned long in advance and are worked up to, furiously and desperately, trying to get ahead and move things around so that you can relax. Despite best efforts to switch off, emails and missed-calls still scream for attention. After 5pm? Weekend? In another country? Doesn’t matter, the fear of losing the job means you are fair game.
And just before you descend fully into a miasma that will have you reaching for the job pages, there is a faint glimmer of hope. You find a person, a group, an organisation, that *gasp* shares your values. Who nurture creative individuals in their own ranks, who reach out to the community with honesty and care, rather than putting up barriers. Where there’s one, there are others, and a small network builds of people who lift each other up and understand the significance and worth in what you do. Conversations move from, ‘what can you do’ to ‘how can we help’. Through thought and action they say, here is some trust, take it and do the thing you’ve proven you can do. Impostor syndrome hits, what if you can’t do it well enough?
But you can. You have. You will.
The old adage ‘walk a few miles in the other person’s shoes’ before you judge them’ is alive and well!
If you have a routine, predictable job like packing biscuits or stacking shelves, it is fairly easy to measure ‘productivity’ and assess a fair payment of £x per y boxes packed.
Some jobs appear to be like this from the outside…….. but really are anything but. Teachers are often judged on what happens between 9 and 4 during term time but that was always the easiest part of the job for me. The endless hours of planning, marking, attending meetings, keeping up to date with my subject knowledge, studying new examination syllabuses, ordering equipment, mentoring other staff etc. etc. etc. are ‘invisible’ but without them the ‘up front’ bit can’t work!
I used to get really angry when people (especially politicians) described jobs like teaching and nursing as ‘vocations’. Basically, no sane person would think of doing them for the financial rewards on offer unless they also had some ‘calling’ or motivation to do the work.
It must be even more frustrating for you………………… the TV series ‘What do artists do all day?’ tried to address this but to most people it still appears that they just doss around, play with paint/clay/stone and charge ridiculous prices for their ‘art’ which, after all, is just ‘a few pounds worth of stuff’ arranged in a different way!
I have experience of one of your frustrations…… in a very minor, amateur fashion. When people find out that you ‘take photos’, they may ask if you could take a few pictures of their wedding/divorce/children/pets/house etc. and very generously say ‘I’ll pay for the film/prints’ as if they are doing you an enormous favour.
I dread to think what your ‘hourly rate’ must be once you vector in all of the ‘invisible’ elements but I suspect that it would be defined as ‘slave labour’ if you were employed to do a ‘routine’ job.
In the end, its all about what makes you happy and satifies your creative urges. If you expect Joe and Janet Bloggs to understand/empathise then you will be for ever disappointed!
When the ‘unaware’ get you down, just remember that there are lots of people out there who appreciate and admire your work.
Agreed, ‘vocation’ is only one step away from that other favourite, ‘you should be grateful to be in a job like this.’ It’s a slippery slope. Yeah the doing you a favour thing is *very* common, isn’t it – don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful when people want to pay me for the work I do, but also I expect payment for work… but to some that still comes as a surprise, like ‘oh you’re not doing it for the enjoyment?’ To be fair, when I worked PAYE full time it was just as bad, only with the company treating you like a commodity. At least this way I have a bit more control about the people I choose to work with. Thanks Mike, appreciate you taking the time to comment.