I used to spend time struggling with the idea of “fairness.”
Do you, ever? Do you think about whether people or situations or the universe itself are fair to you? Or to other people? I’m not even sure I know what fair means anymore… but I’m pretty sure that it’s meaningless to talk about it in any context beyond that of specific personal interaction.
I think it’s fine to tell a friend I think they are being “unfair” — they aren’t taking something into account that they should in this moment, or they are judging me without empathy, or…. well, there are many ways that people who are vulnerable to each other can be unfair, you know? Perhaps fairness and vulnerability are linked in this way… I don’t know, I’ll have to think more about that. But I do know that part of my definition of closeness is that there is space for me to speak and be heard.
But, you know, Life and The Universe and the Random Strangers Of The World do not have to listen to me. It’s not a rule. And so how can I possibly expect fairness from them?
It’s nice to think that things happen for a reason — good things and bad things — because it makes it seem possible to control them if we only understand the cause. It makes it seem that we can interject an element of fairness into these universal transactions. But, you know, it’s not “fair” that Nicola has MS, and it’s not unfair either. MS is in the world, and people get it. It’s not fair that our beloved cat died this summer and broke my fucking heart and that I still cry so hard I get nosebleeds, but it’s not unfair either. All living things on the planet die. It’s not fair that I have specific opportunities that other people don’t, and it’s not unfair either. It’s the result of a million choices that I made, and that some of those Random Strangers made, that ended up bringing us together in ways that changed our lives. That’s what happens. (I recognize that many of my opportunities are a result of social injustice to other people — but I’m not sure I wish to apply the word “unfair” to that anymore. Wrong? Yes, that’s a good word. But this idea of fairness is something else.)
And in the midst of thinking about fairness, today I read this post on Seth Godin’s blog: Maybe you can’t make money doing what you love.
I’ve long felt this way. I knew I would not make a living as a writer at the beginning, and that’s why I was so happy to find myself at Wizards of the Coast, doing work that I could really get behind, that changed me in ways I will carry with me for the rest of my life. That’s where I made the money that let me stop working full-time and focus on my art. And you know, it never occurred to me to think it was unfair that I had to do that. Why should I expect people to support me — to pay for my life on the planet to whatever standard I set for myself — just because I want to express myself? Just because I want to make art?
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that people make a living as artists, and I would like to do it myself — but I sure as hell don’t expect it, and I don’t think it’s a direct measure of the value of my art if I do, or if I don’t. I think it’s just what happens.
And the interesting thing to me is that, like Seth Godin, I have lots of negative capability around this stuff. Screenwriting fascinates and compels me because it is both art and work, in all the ways that I understand the latter — creative, collaborative, communication-dependent, and focused on results that do not necessarily reflect only my needs. The opportunity to do it was one of those million-choices confluences. And it gave me the enormous gift of rediscovering pure passion for my writing, and the equally great gift to walk away from standards of commercial success that I could not live up to.
But you know what? If it works out, I’ll have found a way to make money through art.
I used to spend time struggling with the idea of fairness. Now, I’d rather spend time making choices. And seeing what happens.
I no longer spend much time struggling with the fairness concept. I think our definitions of what âfairâ means may be different. I also tend to use the âwrongâ word more myself, but I still think a lot of things in life are unfair. Wrong = unfair. Thatâs just life; itâs not fair much of the time. I discovered that early in life. Bad things happen to good people. To me that is unfair. What is alive dies, yes. When death comes in due course after a full life, Iâd say thatâs fair. When it comes early, Iâd say thatâs unfair. But its all just words. Maybe itâs that things which are beyond our control have no fairness â they just are â no matter how wrong they seem. But things we do to each other are within our control and therefore fair/unfair. I can agree with that.
We are where we are because of choices we have made. Sometimes those choices were made in reaction mode because of wrong things that happened, but still they were choices.
Iâve thought a lot about that whole âmaking money doing what you loveâ thing too. Iâve always been skeptical, but my jury is still out. Certainly the money is no measure of the worth of oneâs art or self. Making money has so much more to do with marketing than art (and what other people like) in my view, that it is in no way a given.
I certainly have experience some of SGâs points myslef. Especially his example of his friend who does PR. I know for certain that heâs right about this:
âThe pitfalls:
1. In order to monetize your work, you’ll probably corrupt it, taking out the magic in search of dollars
and
2. Attention doesn’t always equal significant cash flow.â
In the midst of money struggles, Iâm still trying to make some choices that are right for me. Because heâs right on about âloving what you doâ being important. If we canât love what weâre doing, what is the point? That endless cycle that so many of us get caught up in of doing crap we hate to pay for the structure (everything) that will give us a fraction of time tto do what/be with who we love?
Someone sent me this article today that made me fell a little bit better about some of my choices. Itâs by Malcolm Gladwell, and heâs talking about late bloomers — of which I consider myself one.
When you talked about interacting with others and Random Strangers, it reminded me of a movie called “Run, Lola, Run.” Without going into much detail here, the movie shows how small details can influence each individual’s future.
I remember when I was young and I told my mother that some situation wasn’t fair. She’d always say that life wasn’t fair. It took a long time for me to get that message. In my adult life I’ve come to see that there is a lot of unfairness in the world—good, kind people have bad things happen to them, and the bad guys just keep on living. If I thought about it too much, I would just go crazy, so I try to focus on the small stuff that does make me happy.
I’ve thought for a long time that some of the luckiest people are those that can make a living doing something that they love. I hope you are able to spend your life that way.
The crux of the issue for me does seem to be expectation. And, so much of what I expect is formed by all of the complex social history, pressure, birth order, privilege (endless list) I have or don’t have. When I expect something good to happen I find it unfair when it does not. For example when my mother died unexpectedly I did not feel it was unfair – because I expected she would die one day. But it did seem unfair that we didn’t say goodbye because I didn’t expect that she would simply drop dead.
I have yet to figure out how to make a living by doing what I love. And as could be guessed, I never expected to.
Aside: I recently adopted another cat. I used to have three, the oldest was 19 when she died a few years ago and I cried for weeks and intermittently for months. The remaining two are now both in their mid-teens. I got the new one to fill that age gap . . . so I will always have one that will be alive for a long time . . . I expect that will somehow make it easier when death visits one of the other two. Maybe we each construct (i.e., chose) our world to limit the kinds of unfairness we expect to visit us.
I don’t make money doing what I love. I never expected to. Huh.
Next time pick something that’s a bit easier to sort out, okay? (wink)
With your talent, Kelley, there is no doubt you could write for money, but that’s not the dilemma, is it? You are an amazing being, most likely a golden child, so the real struggle (and this is mine as well and maybe N’s, too) is making a living from what you want to write, what you need to say.
I just want to clarify that I was talking about difference between getting paid to do what one loves vs. finding something to do that one loves to do.
Here’s the part of SG’s post that talks about that:
“Doing what you love is as important as ever, but if you’re going to make a living at it, it helps to find a niche where money flows as a regular consequence of the success of your idea. Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, especially if you need to make a living at it. Go find a job you can commit to, a career or a business you can fall in love with.”
I find it really hard to commit to working in advertising (even if it is photography) although suddenly something that I despised doing a year ago, looks much different in the midst of financial concerns…. Some people do love it – that’s fine for them. I do not.
I’m thinking that most of us (at least) could find things to do to earn a living that we could feel good about. Couldn’t we? And if we focused on that more often, the world would be a better place.
One day, many kilometers of streets exploded in Guadalajara killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands homeless because some politician was stealing gasoline from the State and got caught doing it, so he dumped it into the public sewer system to “wash away” the evidence. The guy responsible is still having a blast, there was no punishment whatsoever. Life is not fair. One of my sister’s classmates in university was kidnapped. The family was told to pay a $2,000 US ransom. They handed over the money ASAP and received a box containing their son’s head in return. Life is not fair. Every day in Mexico reminded me, in one way or another, that life isn’t fair. But it also showed me beautiful things and put beautiful people on my path. Life is just life.
I never even dreamed I could make a career out of writing until recently. I still don’t expect to earn a living from it. I wrote my first short story for some competition when I was in elementary school, and won a choose-your-own-adventure book collection for it. I wrote my first set of poems in high school for yet another competition and received all the works of Federico GarcÃa Lorca as prize. But I never thought much of that. I probably attempted to write six short stories between ages ten and twenty six. It was too busy learning math and chemistry and sociology and economics while I lived with my parents. When I left their home at seventeen, I was too busy working a variety of jobs so I could pay the rent and buy books and equipment for school.
I probably became a translator because learning a second language did rank high on the “skills that help you get a better life” chart. And I love the pool of information one can access through English. I took translation way more seriously than writing because there were people willing to pay me—modestly—to do it. Tourists were constantly hiring me to drive them around the city and interpret for them. I translated a dozen theater plays and computer programming manuals. I subtitled two movies per week for public screening at a small theater. I did that for a year, which means I subtitled about 96 movies. The money was about enough to buy me the coffee and banana bread that kept me awake while I got the job done. But the delight of being able to work with/around movies and language kept me going back to the dark little room with the wonky electronic typewriter, a TV screen and two VHS recorders.
I can perfectly understand how screenwriting, even with its many demands and crushing pressure, can allow you to fulfill both needs: to tell a story and earn money while you’re at it. And, like translation, screenwriting is highly addictive. Godspeed.
I am so far behind on comments that I will probably never catch up, and I hope you will all forgive me for not having responded before to this very thoughtful and interesting conversation. I’m enjoying what everyone has to say, and thinking a lot about it too.
Jennifer (#1), I go back and forth on the “money corrupts art” idea. Like everything else, the choice to “corrupt” one’s work — whatever the term may mean to the individual artist — is a choice.
I worry about what I perceive as the casual use of corrupt in this context (please note, that’s directed at Godin’s use in his post, not at what you’ve said). It seems easy to talk about corrupting art by interjecting Filthy Commerce into the mix, but all that does is reinforce the cultural notion that Art = Suffering, and it’s not Real Art unless the artist Really Suffers, including being misunderstood, underappreciated, starving in the garret, blah blah blah.
Is it corrupt when someone churns out a formulaic thriller every 10 months? I don’t think so. One might not call it art, but it sure is what a lot of people read, and reading is not a bad thing.
I understand that there are ways to twist art that kill the artist’s soul. I totally get that. But the artist gets to choose, and if one’s art does become corrupt, then I say let’s look to the source of the art. Money doesn’t make art: people do.
i am thinking these days about what “art” really is, and what it’s for, can you tell? (grin).
And thanks very much for the Gladwell article, I’m actually hoping to do a post about it.
Patti (#2), thanks for the good wishes, and right back at you.
I have such a hard time when I feel overwhelmed by all the things in the world that are wrong. When I was young, when I had to live by ideas and notions because I had so little experience, I couldn’t understand how people could ignore wrongness that was happening anywhere, anytime. Now I do understand. I don’t like myself when I ignore those things, but I still do it sometimes. I believe we all do, except perhaps for the mad saints. It’s good they are in the world, to show the rest of us that kindness and love are possible on a mass scale, but jesus, they sure do pay for it.
Hey Robin (#3), yes, I do think it’s all about expectations. I read somewhere a long time ago the idea that all anger is the result of unmet expectations. I think about that a lot, and I try when I’m angry to step back and figure out what I was expecting that I didn’t get. It helps put me in a place where I can let go of being angry, and focus on getting the balance back (with myself, and with whatever/whomever I’m angry at).
And these days, I find myself every once in while able to behave in a given situation the way I’d like to be treated, without expectation…
And then when I need something easy to sort out, I go straight for the cat poetry and cartoons. And champagne!
Jan (#4), thanks for your lovely words, but I’m not so golden as all that (smile). Just trying to figure things out, you know? And have some conversation and connection along the way.
I don’t know that I do struggle anymore to make a living saying what I need to say. I actually think that I’m coming to a place where I’m willing to unhook the two…. hmm, and now I’m wondering if that’s part of the dynamic that I was trying to respond to in my comment above (#7) to Jennifer. Of course I’d like so many people to value my work that between them, they paid me a living wage. But unhooking the work from the wage (in my heart and soul) makes it easier to focus on making the work whatever it ends up being. That doesn’t mean I’ve unhooked it in the “real” world — for example, I really would like to be a working screenwriter, and get paid lotsa lotsa money to write stuff.
So here I am, just still trying to figure things out. One reason I appreciate these comment conversations so much is that they help me with that, so thank you and everyone else here, I appreciate it.
Jennifer (#5), you said: Iâm thinking that most of us (at least) could find things to do to earn a living that we could feel good about. Couldnât we?
I absolutely think so. My time at Wizards of the Coast was different from every other job experience I’ve had specifically for this reason. It was hard sometimes, and sometimes it was just a j-o-b, but especially in the last couple of years, when I was leading my own team, I felt great about what I was doing. I made a boatload of money in that job, a six-figure salary, and I thought what I was doing was worth it. And it was very joyful, even when it was hard.
If I had to get another job, I would actively seek that kind of experience again, regardless of the money.
Karina, such hard stories. I talk big about hard things in life, but I have never had someone’s head sent to me in a box, and I hope I never will. My god, people can be cruel. And callous. And such a fucking mystery to me sometimes. I think that when I despair of the wrongness in the world, it’s because I feel utterly without understanding, utterly and helplessly disconnected. I hate that.
I know that I write partly because I am in love with language and how it shapes and reflects and limits and frees us… I love this post of yours with that startling and provocative Rabassa quote. I’m still thinking about it.
Yes, about the “corrupting” comment. I almost came back after I wrote those things and amended that to saying something about choice. There’s always some type of choice involved.
I was also thinking of my personal experience; of working 14-18 hour days and having nothing left at the end of them. Doing that kind of commercial work has some creative element to it, but I don’t consider it art. Maybe in rare instances it crosses over, but most of the time no.
So I think there are two parts to the corrupting or distorting or whatever it means to the individual. For me it pretty much just suppressed it so much I forgot about it for long periods of time. Part of that was the time/energy factor, and part of it was comes into his ‘corrupting’ idea. When one starts to think, ‘how can I change this idea to be marketable, sale-able,’ I think one gets into a murky area. Keeping the passion tied into it can get difficult.
I do think I could do it differently now if it weren’t for the time/energy factor. When the only choice to make the business work is to work that kind of a schedule, I don’t think I have the energy for both art and commercial. If there is more time for both, I think maybe I could pull it off.
I don’t think either choice is bad or wrong, it’s just one we have to make for ourselves. And be happy with.
Oh sure, I didn’t necessarily think you were talking about the same sort of thing he was. And yes, personal experience always wins. Whatever is true for you is true for you. I do not mean at all to argue with your personal experience.
I do think it’s possible to distort or repress our art for all kinds of reasons. I guess it’s the word corrupt itself that gets me. I can get funny about semantics, and for me that word has a very specific meaning. For me, it’s not a word to be used at all lightly. Again, I’m not saying that you do that! (grin). Just reporting on the view from here.
I think we can lose passion for our work for lots of reasons. I certainly lost my passion for writing for a long time. Was it because I was selling out? Not really (laughing now). It’s hard to sell out when no one’s buying.
I do understand about energy. I really do. The thing is, the question of energy often is tied in with timelines, with internal deadlines that represent “commitment” or “success” or “seriousness” — but as I’ve said before, it’s not a race. Me, I think any single minute you spend on a photograph is a gift to the universe, because you are that talented. And I never say that kind of thing lightly.
I didn’t think you were being argumentative, and I wasn’t arguing back; just trying to explain my position a little further – probably shouldn’t be doing that when I’m acutually supposed to be ‘working’ and probably only partially tuned in.
Yep, definitely lots of reasons to lose our passion. I certainly had more than one…. But for me, I do think it’s possible to sell out, even if no one buys…. The intent is still there.
I’m just blown away by your last comment. Thank you.