An artist friend of mine is about to meet a lot of new people and is dreading the conversations that will include the inevitable question, “So, what do you do?”. She knows when she tells them she’s an artist, they’re going to ask, “Can you make a living doing that?” and it’s going to make her feel bad.

I don’t know why people feel like this is a socially acceptable question to ask artists but I, too, have been confronted with these sorts of responses when conversing with civilians. When I was an actor, people used to say, “Oh, really? You’re an actor? What restaurant do you wait tables at?” Har, har, har. I think they meant to express some secret knowledge they felt they had about the difficulties of being an actor but it was always such an uncomfortable moment. For me, my answers were: “No, actually, I’m working as an actor.” “No, actually, my day job is teaching.” “No, actually, I’m temping.” For my friends who did work in restaurants, sometimes they felt they had to play along, laugh at the joke (which was their life) and name the restaurant they worked in.

To keep reading "Can You Make a Living Doing That?" visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.

This is Episode 416

Song: Make a Life, Not a Living

Image by Amauri Mejia via Unsplash

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Emily Rainbow Davis