28. June 2026

Balancing Life and Art

As an artist it can be a lifetime struggle to balance your survival job while still pursuing your artistic needs. We’ve all felt it. When we’re stuck in some shitty job that sucks our time away from going after our hearts desire life can be painful and frustrating.

For a lot of artists a regular full time job is a prison sentence. I know it is for me. I quit a decent paying job that monopolized all of my time and from that experience I’ve been reintroduced to some familiar freedoms. I wrote a Facebook post a while back and a number of friends found a helpful perspective in it. I thought I’d share most of it here:

I have left that dream job. It was everything I thought it would be and more.

More of what I didn’t want. More hours, more responsibility and more sleepless nights. It turned into a 46+ hour work week. If you’re a badass like I know a few of you are pulling 50-80 hour work weeks this is still a reasonable amount of hours.

Perhaps if it were in my chosen profession this would be true. It’d be miserable perhaps, but hey I went to school for it! I studied for it!

This job I accepted because I wanted more free time to pursue my passions in acting and writing. I was blinded by a pretty damn decent living wage, more than I have ever made.

But my art absolutely suffered to the point of non-existence. There was no time to write, act, audition, go to cast parties.

I was born to be an artist, to actually live every day in relative peace and contentment, in creativity. We all were, but we forget. We put those golden handcuffs on and say “I have to be real! I need this horrendous fucking job to LIVE! My art is just a hobby!”

No. No. No.

If you aren’t managing a balance between your art and your survival, you are failing to achieve the life you deserve. Your happiness is suffering.

How do you pursue a living and your art? I’d love to hear.