There are dozens of different categories of artists. Painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, and writers. As a writer myself, I can speak to the utterly freeing nature of the creative life. There is a lot of beauty in creation; weaving tales and forming new worlds allows me to open up factions of my mind that would otherwise be pushed aside in everyday life. However, such an existence also comes with a pretty heavy price, one with which I spend my days trying to understand.
I come from Engineers: my parents both studied a combination of math and computer science, which in the 80's kept them at the forefront of the technological revolution. My older brother is an actuary, a numbers genius who spends his days working through piles of data to assess risk. Genetically, I have a predisposition to math and the sciences, but my heart has always been with the creative. Unfortunately, this comes with a fair amount of stress. My family is the pinnacle of stability, so needless to say my aspirations for a life of writing are a little daunting. An uniquely unstable profession, it worries not only my family, but me on a daily basis. Some days, I have full existential crisis about my future, dreaming up disaster situations where I'm 48, miserable, and working in a Starbucks because no one will ever want to read anything I've written. There is also the fun fact that even if I get a stable job writing, the chances of me making any reasonable living as a writer is a joke. An absolute joke.
Luckily, there are some pretty wonderful pros to a creative life. For starters, getting to make up my own stories is extremely cathartic. I basically spend my days creating intricate lies. There is also a lot of freedom of expression in a life of writing. Creative positions lend themselves to a more open environment, where fashion, language, and general behavior categorized as "professional" tend towards a lax attitude. I'm not particularly gifted at keeping my attitude in check, so this tends to work out for me. Most importantly, there are the crazy hours, the city hopping, the overall uncertainty of the situation that makes my life exciting. It's not always fun, and some days I really do think about choosing a more stable life. Luckily, I choose not to allow my fears to keep me from pursuing my risky life that will lead to my happiness.
Only you can decide what is best for you. You have to choose what makes you happy, whether that means whipping out a paint brush and some canvas, or spending you days crushing some numbers. Whatever you choose, just remember that you only have one life to lead, so you'll want to make it great.
