The honest struggle of being an artist of any kind whether it be a painter, an actor, a dancer, or a musician, is that when you begin to enter the real world you have to make a choice between your art, or a practical, tactical, financially viable path. It's the hardest decision because on one hand you are so in love with your art and you feel like you would be betraying yourself by doing anything but that, but on the other hand, you realize that dreams can only take you so far in the world and a lot of the time dreams don't pay the rent.
Say you chose your art, one of three things will happen: One, you will make it, you will get your big break and be set for life. Two, you will be a little successful here, a little there, but you have times where you deal with no electricity for a little while because you missed that payment. Three, no one will ever notice you, because you are among a sea of creators and artists and you drowned under them all. These possibilities run through our heads daily.
It's the fear every artist thinks about every day, maybe consciously, maybe subconsciously. But there is always a sense of trueness to those who follow their heart, as if nothing in the world could shake their love for what they do. I admire the people who could care less about the real world and follow their dreams, their art, into oblivion without thought of what will pay the rent, what will feed them, because they trust their art, and themselves.
Say you didn't chose your art, instead you dropped it all and became a business major. You hate your classes because they bore you to death, you have next to no creative outlet, but you keep thinking about the light at the end of the tunnel that is job opportunities. You suffer through the week doodling in every margin, humming through the halls, doing a little move when waiting for the elevator, trying to convince yourself that you made the right choice.
Being a business major isn't all bad though, you do learn some pretty useful things, like how businesses run, how to market a business, and then you think you could start your own business, be your own boss. But then that excitement fades because you float back down to the present where you're nodding off in class.
This is my life. I am an artist turned business major. I see people like me everyday. When people ask me what I want to do after college I ask back, "what do I want to do? or what do I plan to do?" because the answers to those questions are very very different. I don't know if the choice I made was the right one, but I'm working on a way to do both-- do what I love and pay the bills with it. Stay tuned.
