If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to see it, did it make a sound?
If I spend my life making art and writing, and people don’t see the majority of what I made or wrote…does it matter?
I argue, most ardently—yes.
“Monetize Your Hobbies—er, Art”
I grew up when the millennials were steeped in Hustle Culture. I loved all the “boss babe” rhetoric: the golden marbled notebooks, the shiny courses, the podcasts. They claimed they’d cracked the code: monetize your hobbies. If it’s not making money, it’s not worth it.
It made sense in my head. But I couldn’t get something like that into my heart.
Once anything involved money, it became so mundane. Why can’t I just create to create? The way I breathe oxygen?
It depends on what your reason for creating is. Disney was far better when they followed their namesake’s ludicrous passion, risking financial ruin in pursuit of storytelling and a feeling, rather than what it is now: a disgusting, moneymaking machine that optimizes characters to sell as stuffed animals and costumes at Walmart. Because, sure–any goober can partner with creative people, check the data, and feed the masses what they want.
But what do the masses need?
The Evolution of a Creative
I grew up homeschooled in South Carolina. My four siblings and my mom were my whole world. I don’t regret it, but the fact is that it was a very small world.
For 21 years, I made a lot. I wrote a lot. Most of it, never seen. And that is completely fine.
Creating was my way of taking control of my small world. Give me a box? That’s fine: inside that box, I’ve drawn another box, and in there is a whole other universe. After all, as Leonardo da Vinci said: “Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.”
When I first moved to LA, money was insanely tight. I couldn’t afford meat my whole first year here, and survived on eggs for protein. There was no money for such luxuries as paying for gas for weekend trips, or getting dinner by myself. I found myself with a lot of free time, and a tiny 400-square-foot apartment. There, I took some of my most creative photos, constrained by both money and space. I still think back on those times fondly; I was so, so full of color and life from the sheer amount of personal projects I took on.
“The Crazy One”
There in the southern Christian circles, artists were “the crazy ones.” Conservatives don’t quite like anybody who doesn’t want to stay in a box, so those of us who leaned creative were closely monitored, lest we dye our hair some unnatural color or get a second piercing and the godliness leaks out. I got a special thrill out of realizing that, as an art major at a conservative Christian college, it was almost expected that we bent the rules more than other people. Art is its own kind of dissent, even in a bubble.
Writing and other such forms of creativity were necessary for me in order to cope with my world, with the life I was given.
So, don’t let people insist you monetize your hobbies (if that’s not what you want to do—and, at the very list, keep some of your art/writing sacred, and without financial ties). Don’t let yourself only make things or write things to be seen, or worse yet, to make money.
Do it for yourself.
Because if you’re a creative, it’s what will keep you breathing.
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