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[PSA] Art and Opportunity Cost
8 years ago
Greetings,
With the holiday season coming up and potentially an $42,000 medical bill hanging over my head (because my insurance company is being a butt), I feel like it's time to discuss this again.
Every once in a while, I look at other people who are really good at things that I used to be able to do and I think "Wow. I'm too old to be good at anything." For most things, that is true. I've lost my flexibility and my singing voice, I never learned to sight-read music because I was losing my vision, and I came into riding without proper foundations. I am far far past the age I would need to start learning any of these things in order to gain enough experience to perform at a professional level while I'm still young enough to handle it.
And then I stop and think about it, and I realize, there /is/ something I am so good at that I can do it at a professional level; accounting. As a matter of fact, I am a professional, which is why I'm absent from FA for half the year. I would produce so much more art and I would be so much better than I am now if I had stayed home and practiced art, but I didn't. I learned accounting instead. Now, I don't have the time to seriously practice anything else because I'm too busy making my living as an accountant, so I'm never going to be as good as I could have been at skating or riding or music or art.
At the moment, having just been rejected from BLFC Dealer's Den despite having made it in the past couple years and waiting on news from DenFur, with cons dying all around me and politics closing in, I am glad that I decided to be an accountant. I just have to breathe and remind myself not to panic because I still have other options. Granted, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy because if I was a full-time professional artist, I would not have other options, but I probably would not have been rejected from Dealer's Den.
The ultimate point is that a person pursing anything as a hobbyist cannot become as good as the same person would be as a professional, because a hobbyist has to devote at least 40 hours per week to doing something else. That person simply doesn't have as much available practice time. As a result an artist needs to be supported with money in order to keep producing good art. An artist needs to keep producing good art in order to produce really good art. It takes a professional level of practice to obtain a professional level of skill, and an artist can't get a professional level of practice on a hobbyist's time budget.
As I said before, telling an artist to find another job is the same as telling that person to quit doing art. It doesn't matter if that person could theoretically keep doing art just for fun, there won't be enough time and pressure to practice well and efficiently. It'll just be mucking around.
Right now, we still have an influx of beginners trying to use art as a minimum wage retail job because they can't get hired anywhere else, but as the economy starts to pick back up in some areas, they'll start to leave as they find better jobs. That is absolutely fine. Not everyone who picks up a tablet /should/ be an artist or has enough interest and dedication to put in the practice. Not every artist has to make it. Just like all other jobs, if that person just isn't good enough to ever make a living at it, that person should probably go do something else.
However, if you, personally, as a viewer, find an artist that you want to keep in the art industry, hire that person! Artists won't keep making art if they have better things to do. If I start picking up weekend shifts at my barn, I will stop painting. There just aren't enough hours in the day. If you can make practicing art a talented and dedicated person's best option, the world will be gifted with a great artist. If not, we'll end up with another tax accountant.
In other news, if I lose this fight with my insurance company, I might have to beg for money on FA for the first time in the nine years that I have been here. If it comes to that, I am really really sorry, and yes, I will draw porn.
With the holiday season coming up and potentially an $42,000 medical bill hanging over my head (because my insurance company is being a butt), I feel like it's time to discuss this again.
Every once in a while, I look at other people who are really good at things that I used to be able to do and I think "Wow. I'm too old to be good at anything." For most things, that is true. I've lost my flexibility and my singing voice, I never learned to sight-read music because I was losing my vision, and I came into riding without proper foundations. I am far far past the age I would need to start learning any of these things in order to gain enough experience to perform at a professional level while I'm still young enough to handle it.
And then I stop and think about it, and I realize, there /is/ something I am so good at that I can do it at a professional level; accounting. As a matter of fact, I am a professional, which is why I'm absent from FA for half the year. I would produce so much more art and I would be so much better than I am now if I had stayed home and practiced art, but I didn't. I learned accounting instead. Now, I don't have the time to seriously practice anything else because I'm too busy making my living as an accountant, so I'm never going to be as good as I could have been at skating or riding or music or art.
At the moment, having just been rejected from BLFC Dealer's Den despite having made it in the past couple years and waiting on news from DenFur, with cons dying all around me and politics closing in, I am glad that I decided to be an accountant. I just have to breathe and remind myself not to panic because I still have other options. Granted, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy because if I was a full-time professional artist, I would not have other options, but I probably would not have been rejected from Dealer's Den.
The ultimate point is that a person pursing anything as a hobbyist cannot become as good as the same person would be as a professional, because a hobbyist has to devote at least 40 hours per week to doing something else. That person simply doesn't have as much available practice time. As a result an artist needs to be supported with money in order to keep producing good art. An artist needs to keep producing good art in order to produce really good art. It takes a professional level of practice to obtain a professional level of skill, and an artist can't get a professional level of practice on a hobbyist's time budget.
As I said before, telling an artist to find another job is the same as telling that person to quit doing art. It doesn't matter if that person could theoretically keep doing art just for fun, there won't be enough time and pressure to practice well and efficiently. It'll just be mucking around.
Right now, we still have an influx of beginners trying to use art as a minimum wage retail job because they can't get hired anywhere else, but as the economy starts to pick back up in some areas, they'll start to leave as they find better jobs. That is absolutely fine. Not everyone who picks up a tablet /should/ be an artist or has enough interest and dedication to put in the practice. Not every artist has to make it. Just like all other jobs, if that person just isn't good enough to ever make a living at it, that person should probably go do something else.
However, if you, personally, as a viewer, find an artist that you want to keep in the art industry, hire that person! Artists won't keep making art if they have better things to do. If I start picking up weekend shifts at my barn, I will stop painting. There just aren't enough hours in the day. If you can make practicing art a talented and dedicated person's best option, the world will be gifted with a great artist. If not, we'll end up with another tax accountant.
In other news, if I lose this fight with my insurance company, I might have to beg for money on FA for the first time in the nine years that I have been here. If it comes to that, I am really really sorry, and yes, I will draw porn.
On the flip side, I hope things go well with your insurance. I hate seeing artists who literally have to beg for money, because that is all they can do. In an ideal world, no one should have to beg for money, be we don't live in an ideal world.
I wish the best!
The artist struggle never ends though! That's some enraging bs with the insurance company. Funny, was talking with my mate yesterday, how insurance companies get away with screwing so many people over. Was gonna say if you can at all drag their asses to court, but then the money issue compounded by that. >> Don't know man, I sincerely hope something works out and you can break through some of that horse shit and come out clean the other side.
Some people can get around the problem by being inherently talented, and therefore able to learn fast enough to catch up, but I, and everyone else, will just have to accept that we'll never be good at anything new. ^^;
I don't think that skill acquisition moves in a purely linear fashion. Right now your paradigm has skill acquisition to improve at a steady rate, with the X axis as practice time and the Y axis as skill, meaning that unless you start with more skill, you'll always be behind someone who started before you. But what if skill acquisition approaches an asymptote, instead? Say, once you get to 10,000 hours of practice time, you continue to improve, but in much smaller increments (compared to the amount you have improved so far). Meaning, your skill will always be getting better, and approaching theoretical perfection but never quite getting there. However, the difference in skill between someone who has had 10,000 hours of practice vs. 20,000 hours of practice is not *double*, as you might expect, and to non-experts in the field is more or less indistinguishable.
Does that make sense? You definitely do need enough practice time to reach that professional level of skill in the first place; I'm not disputing that. But I think it is still possible to catch up with someone who started practicing before you did, and reach a reasonable level of parity with them once you reach a critical mass of practice. As long as they keep practicing, they'll be better than you, but only in a way that professionals in the field will recognize. If that makes sense.
And with non-athletic endeavors, whether you become a pro at the thing at 20 or at 40 doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme of things.