I sat on the floor with my legs crossed, waiting for my name to be called. We stood up, one by one, and told the group what we wanted to be when we grew up. I can’t quite remember this day, but I saw it on video. My name was called, and when I got into the circle, I looked around and said, “When I grow up, I want to be a dancer.”
I was five years old. I’m 28 now, and I’m not a dancer. To be honest, I don’t entirely know what I am. Caught somewhere between the arts and a completely different career, I’m trying to figure out how I can connect with my inner five-year-old and let her dance again.
Many of us are creatives who are developing careers unrelated to our art. Let me ask you: What is your relationship with art? What role does it play in your life, and have you been able to maintain your connection with it as you develop your career?
For most of my childhood, I had dance classes every week, occasional performances, and jam sessions in my room or in my head. I danced on school teams, and continued into undergrad, but when I went to graduate school and started working, all the dancing stopped. I jumped headfirst into the nine-to-five and lost a little bit of my creative spirit. I was losing touch with art, and in turn, losing touch with myself.
By year two, I wanted to make a change—I needed to make room for creativity. I signed up for dance classes and started moving again, but I could feel how disconnected my mind and body were. I picked up my old camera and took photographs of everything I saw.
I decided to study photography part-time, and practice portraits with my coworkers during the day. From nine-to-five I was in the office, and from five-to-nine I took classes almost every day—I was either dancing or learning about composition and exposure.
Diving back into the arts gave me the space to explore my sense of self, but it was exhausting, I needed to find a balance. I eventually quit my full-time job to jump into photography and travel. This, however, proved to be an interesting challenge that involved learning major lessons about balancing creative passion and financial stability.
The idea or myth of the starving artist is daunting, and unfortunately, it can sometimes be a reality, so it’s crucial to figure out a balance that works for you.
Imagine for a moment the art you could be creating, the incredible recipes you could be discovering, the abstract portraits you could be painting, the beats you could be producing or the lives you could be impacting. So many of us feel stuck while dreaming about the creative things we want to do. We’re unable to fully jump in without giving up our work, our incomes and our traditional career paths. How many times have you said to yourself, “I’ll do it when I have time”?
We sometimes let go of our art, in order to focus on career development in another space. Sometimes, we can get caught up in earning money and accumulating wealth—it can become everything. But is it? Is it everything if our passions exist elsewhere? How do we make space in our lives for the things we love, and how do we maintain art and creativity in our lives, while we work to live comfortably in society?
I wonder, sometimes, if I am the only one who has a hard time learning this balance, or if other creatives are struggling with it, too. Creativity is an integral part of who we are—sometimes we use it in overt ways, and sometimes we’re unaware of the presence of it in our lives.
I’ve connected with real people who have learned or are learning the balance of work and art in their own ways. They are women who have made a choice to remain true to their creativity and their art, while also continuing with their pursuit of financial stability and a meaningful career. You can read more about them below.
Chanice @chanice_a_b
I consider my relationship with art to be quite toxic. I have a rather strong yearning to create and to be around art. I’d say it occupies about 78 percent of my mental space, but my actual earthly time is spent at work, in traffic or doing the mundane.
To me, art is therapy and self-exploration. It brings me feelings that can’t be expressed in any way other than creating. It reveals parts of me that have been dormant, or parts of me that I’ve never met.
My connection with art has come and gone. So far, the events of my life have determined whether or not I’ll even have time for art. Lately, more than ever, I find myself giving it more priority in my life. I’m realizing that prioritizing art is prioritizing myself. I need the therapy and peace that it brings me, and I need to see my thoughts and feelings manifest into this life.
I’ve been committing to intentionally surrounding myself with art. I’ve been committing to not limiting myself to one type of expression or version of art. I’m literally going where my curiosity takes me. Even if it takes me to a class or workshop, or if I begin to create something that doesn’t resonate, I just have to try it.
The goal at this moment is to increase the presence of art and expression in my life, like pairing art and fitness through pole dancing, or pairing art and potential revenue by learning computer coding for design.
It still feels really small. A lot of my actual efforts have gone into finding ways to make passive income so that I can reduce the time I spend at the office, and increase the time I spend with art.
Piratheeca @piratheeca
The first art form I ever knew of was Carnatic music, also known as South Indian classical music. I was ten when began Carnatic music lessons under the tutelage of Isai Kalavithahar Isai Kalaimani Smt. Bavany Alalasundaram. For 18 years, I have been her student foremost, and then a singer.
In the beginning, it was a tumultuous and unstable time in my life. I was confronted with socio-cultural pressures (as a first-generation immigrant from a large newcomer/refugee Tamil community), domestic violence and watching my Amma navigate single motherhood with no support.
I remember Carnatic music class as an escape from real-life challenges, and as somewhere I could develop and explore my potential. There was no time for me to do this elsewhere, and I am forever grateful that my Amma forced me into that first class. It changed my life forever.
Facing many high-pressure circumstances for more than a decade, singing became an exercise during which I could envision something beyond the hardships I was confronted with—a future. It helped me remember that there were other things in life that I could find, if I just tried to survive in the present.
I was in survival mode for a very long time, and there is much unlearning I still have to do. I didn’t have other people or places to turn to for the social support I needed. In this sense, my Carnatic music teacher provided more than just singing lessons for me. She helped me gain confidence, overcome grief, take risks, accept criticism and continually set goals for myself.
I went on to have a Carnatic music Arangetram and obtain my teacher’s level certification from Annamalai University, because of the values she helped instill in me.
As a lawyer, it can be hard to dedicate time to practicing my art, but this is precisely why I fell in love with Carnatic music and why it managed to remain with me for so long. Singing can be with me anywhere, at any time.
Carnatic music, both historically and presently, is an art form that’s heavily immersed in class, caste, religious, ethnic and gender discrimination. As an artist, I try to resist spaces and ethos that perpetuate the unjust treatment of many minorities, although I know that this does not rectify the benefits I gain from these privileges, too, in other spheres of my life.
There are also many hardships that I still face as a first-generation immigrant, Tamil woman and person of colour. This has both complicated and simplified my relationship with Carnatic music over the years.
For now, Carnatic music is a relatively private part of my life. On the surface level, it may seem very isolating and detrimental to my growth as an artist to consciously avoid popular recitals, venues and people, but Carnatic music is a means for my self-expression, a very intimate and personal journey that I dedicate to myself.
Isela @iselacanela
For me, art is a source of life. It is like perfumed air, a true source of inspiration. Without art, there is not much humanity. It is an inspiring force, and it is what makes us human. Art is the means by which I connect to others. I perceive it as infinite, and it allows me to see our creative capacity as well.
I am a consumer of art, meaning that I am more of a performer than a creator. I perform in plays under direction, and the same goes for dance. I like to read or perform poetry, but I don’t write it. I like to make my own jewellery, but I am inspired by the work of others. I don’t usually generate my own material, but I admire those who do, and I am happy that they exist.
‘Free time’ is not easy to find, as there are so many obligations and distractions. These days, I have been using my art time to work instead, and I am not crazy about that. I know that this is just an adaptation stage in my life, and I will soon be able to do more art. I long to see more of it, to hear more of it. I can’t go too long without art, because life feels empty.
Ola @omirzt
Since my earliest days, art has been a part of my life. My family is Russian, and my mother loved the Bolshoi ballet in Moscow. She always knew that one of her children would be a dancer. I was introduced to the arts through dance and performance at the age of three, and I was professionally trained in ballet.
Although art was a key foundation of my childhood, the creativity aspect of it didn’t truly blossom for me, until I became a fully formed adult. I was doing a lot of work in the creative space, like musical theatre and ballet. I loved putting my heart into different creative projects and building models. With a bit of maturity and professional experience, I was able to start developing generative creative projects.
In terms of my relationship with art, it truly is a therapeutic and cathartic element of my life. For me, dance and spoken-word are two mediums that are about releasing some sort of feeling or atoning for a dark moment. They’re about bringing things to light, especially the darkness.
I find that I do my best writing when I am in the darkest depths. In order to almost save myself, I’ll do long free-write. There is certainly a healing element there. In addition, through creative movement and dance, I can work my way out of a funk.
As a professional working in foreign affairs, I realized that there were limits in terms of the reach of my work. The policy notes and briefings weren’t enough to make the impact I wanted to make. This realization brought me to the development and creation of immersive film. I was able to fill in a gap that I had identified, and besides my own artistic expression, there was utility in my art.
Art brings me healing, expression and a sense of joy that no one can touch. It’s an unconditional joy that I have access to. It’s a sense of self and it is a sacred place you can go to—whether you do so at the studio or someplace else with pen and paper. It is a promise I made to myself, and a treat I always have.
I would be lying if I said I have always been connected to my art, and if I said I was always doing my work and art simultaneously. Growing up, people are sometimes able to take art lessons, or their parents put them in classes. Some are able to continue on, but when I went to university, I stopped dancing, for the most part. I took it up again as a means to connect with folks when I was working overseas. I worked abroad in the Ukraine and Tanzania, and I started dancing to get out there and bridge cultural barriers.
The financial freedom and stability that comes from work really helps me with developing my art, because I can create from a space that is a bit more secure. I know this from experience.
After returning to Canada, I was working as a freelance consultant, developing my film project, and taking dance classes as well. I found that this was a stressful time, as I was not in a good place. I was trying to balance my work and art, which were both precarious and self-driven at the time. It was a struggle to jump into projects when I was not financially stable, as artistic ventures can be resource-intensive and risky.
It’s nice to have stability in one area in order to take risks in another. With commitment, you can balance work and art.
Personally, I cut out after-work drinks, dinners and coffees. This gave me the ability to put money and time into the projects that I cared about. I prioritized my art. People get that, and you end up making friends who share that interest with you—people who want to go to art shows or to galleries, or who want to collaborate with you.
I also start my day with a bit of art; I’ll write a short verse and post it on my Instagram, or have a little dance party! I wake up and tell myself that I am doing my art first. I’m taking care of my joy first, and then I’m going into the office to wrestle with whatever needs to be wrestled with. I also find that being creative outside of the workplace gives you an edge in your career development.
Because of spoken-word, I can freestyle a presentation and use different or more articulate language to communicate a message in a tangible way. Work and art are not two separate things—they bleed into each other.
The project management skills I learned in the workforce have supported me in developing my EP. I work with different collaborators and I know how to negotiate an agreement; not everyone in the art world has those skills. Those who are coming back into the arts from another type of career have a leg up, in some sense, as their skills are applicable in the art world.
I believe everyone is an artist. As opposed to asking people if they are an artist or a creative, I ask people what their creative outlet is. Everyone has something in them—we just have to keep creating and putting our work out there.
As for me, I am still learning. After I stopped dancing, I didn’t feel like a dancer, and more recently, I’ve found it difficult to call myself a photographer. I wasn’t sure if I had earned the right to use that title. I was far more comfortable using words on my resume, as if those were somehow written in stone.
Although I have been exploring photography for a number of years, I wasn’t sure what constituted an artist, and if I truly belonged in that space. The truth is, I have always been an artist—in the quiet of my soul, and sometimes in the outside world.
As for my inner five-year-old, I owe it to her to make a real commitment to art—to creating. Photography, writing, visuals, movement—whatever I am called to do. I think I might owe her one last dance, too.
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imagen 1 Pixabay 2-5 Photos courtesy of the author
