Why I am not associating successful creative career to a huge monetary gain
In a logical sense, we humans tend to come up with an indicator to measure anything; If we want to measure the length of your pencil, then we'll use a ruler, with measurement in cm. If we want to know how heavy a bag of rice is, we'll use a scale, with measurement in gram or kilogram.
It is also important to note that we also have to use the correct and most fitting measurement for certain cases. For example, maybe you would not measure an elephant with human-weighing scales cause the elephant would destroy with just its one leg, before the weighing scale could even measure.
Interestingly, we also tend to measure something abstract too. Such as success: creative success for example.
We do get a lot of questions, or even statements like these: "How are you able to eat if you become an artist?" "You'll earn less money than your siblings/friends" "You cannot get rich by being an artist"
Which is why, it's natural for humans to measure creative career/creative success with an indicator of monetary gain. But that is, to me not exactly the right, and the only indicator.
The three statements above indicated as if, we had to dedicate our self-worth to a career, as if it was the only way of fulfilling life. To me, that's more of an aspiration, something for humans to b looking for than a destination that is mandatory to be fulfilled immediately.
That being said, this is an underrated statement that to live happily can also mean if you can live in the moment. Being grateful with what you have, and work with what you have.
This is why the idea of relating creative success for me to a huge monetary gain isn't right for me. It is, a work that I can gain income for sure, but realistically I wanted to feel enough with my own creative work and career without having the need to scale up.
Because in order to scale up my creative business means my lifestyle has to follow as well, and that I had to actively be working on it since ideally you'd want to make it lasts longer if you'd really wanted it.
After all, in these times shouldn't we be celebrating the creations made by humans, existed in these even tough times?
This blog post was inspired by how a kid, probably at the age of 8, came up to me while I was doing a cat embroidery patch for my mom's pair of trousers. She said, "Oh wow this is very cute and well-made? Why aren't you selling it? I'm sure you'll get a lot of money selling it!"
I love how honest kids can be and I do appreciate the thought. At the same time I feel quite sad because I remembered when I was at her age, I would be focusing on doing fun activity than monetizing it. This is not the fault of anyone, it's really how sad my neighbourhood became like this.
As if creative practice is only valuable when it's making a living, when it's not always like that.
I'm here to be an example of that, while still giving an option for people to support my creative work!
Hope you enjoy this blog post!