grab bag blog

When I quit my day job at a UPS Store to become a mostly freelance designer, it was both exciting and terrifying. I had spent my days working retail for many years, which sometimes afforded me some time during the day to draw, and then sinking myself into designing and acting in the evenings and on the weekends. The prospect of people actually paying me to be creative was a dream. In preparing to strike out on my own and fulfill this dream, I could reasonably anticipate the stress that would come from not having a truly stable workplace, and having to manage all of my own business finances. I had a lot to learn. What I did not anticipate by making creativity and artistry my main occupation was that I could get creatively burned out.

When i had my first day job in Chicago, it was such a low-key place that I was able to do a lot of drawing on my spare time there (with which I spent a lot of time working on my journal comic, Dumbstruck). After work, I worked in the local theatre scene as an actor who occasionally did some posters or websites, or just came home and played video games.

I have chosen to focus on working for the theatre scene in Chicago for several reasons: I already had contacts in the industry; working for arts organizations means a deeper level of appreciation of what I do; and  I love the theatre and have worked in ALL aspects of the industry, so I have a unique insight into the artform and its creation. The downsides are that I won’t become rich from the industry, since it’s all non-profits who are almost always scrimping on some level, and that they all work on similar schedules, which means deadlines often happen around the same time. The theatres here tend to announce their seasons and have their fundraisers around the same time. I’m currently in the midst of doing two comprehensive season design packages at once, having just finished a third. So, as you can image,  more than once in the past year I’ve felt myself burning out.

I recognize the warning signs: I’ll have a mountain of work, but will actively avoid doing it, even if it’s something I enjoy. I’ll instead spend a lot of time in front of the television or outside. It’s like my body’s way of hijacking the whole process and demanding what it needs: a break. It’s like trying to pull a bunch of all-nighters in a row; sooner or later, your body will go to sleep regardless of what you want it to do. When I start spending 12 or more hours a day working on posters, brochures, and websites, my body starts to rebel.

It’s not just physical though. Having worked in hourly retail work for almost a decade, I have developed the mindset that I should be working on client work at least 40 hours a week or more, 8-10 hours a day. If I’m not, then I’m being lazy and this freelance thing won’t work. But that’s a bad mindset to have as a creative person. People are paying me for my creativity and ideas, my ability to take something and make it visual and communicate it effectively. And that creativity is like a well: if you pull from it too much over a short period of time, it will run dry. The creative well needs to be refilled by things like reading new books, listening to new music, going outside and drinking in nature. In order to create, you need inspiration.

And filling yourself with beauty and inspiration is not separate from the job of being a designer. It’s a necessary part of it and needs to be budgeted for. So if, like me, you want to work 40 hours a week, then you need to devote 5-10 hours of  that time to research and discovery. Maybe you take one day a week and just immerse yourself in creative exploration, or maybe you take the first two hours of every day to do so. And I don’t mean take time to fart around on the internet. Fifteen minutes spent watching the leaves of a tree twisting in the sun and the breeze can be more soul refreshing than an hour of reading “30 new Photoshop tutorials” or “120 free grunge fonts” or whatever. Watch people in a coffee shop, go to a bookstore, do activities that are visceral.

Now, I’ve still not managed to fully integrate this into my work schedule yet. The main reason is not only the overlapping deadlines, but also the economics of the situation. If you want to do 30 hours a week of client work and 10 hours of creativity refreshment, then you need to bill those 30 hours to cover all 40. That’s not cheating: your clients are paying you for your creativity, so you can charge them for the time it takes to nourish the creativity. But in my chosen industry, finding the clients willing to pay that hourly amount can be difficult. So I struggle on. Nonethless, I love my job. 🙂