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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2024

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  • You don’t have to be one of the greatest painters ever to be a professional painter, or one of the greatest composers ever to be a professional composer. Same way not every business owner is a billionaire.

    Either way, even for creative geniuses, painting, composing etc. is still hard work that is often not well-rewarded in their lifetimes.


  • Creativity is not innate, though, it’s mostly about being motivated to put in the work to learn it (i.e. it’s a “learned skill”) and professional creative workers very often do trade their physical health for success - it’s high stress, the market is usually very competitive which forces long hours, several creative professions do include direct physical hazards (e.g. dancing is all about physical exercise and might involve risky stuff on the stage like pyrotechnics, visual artists often have to deal with chemical fumes).

    Also, most creative workers don’t get rich and famous, they make barely enough to get by.


  • I hate it when people insist that creative work isn’t “real” work. With a standard job, you do your thing for 8 or so hours and just go home. Creative work tends to be an all day, every day thing because you’re constantly thinking about it, it’s usually longer hours than a standard job because of deadlines, the non-deterministic structure of the work and the competitiveness of most creative fields and you’re probably self-employed anyway. And you often have to put in the work even when you don’t feel inspired or motivated - turning your hobby into a job is a great way to suck the fun out of it. Same way many people have fun doing handyman stuff at home, but being a professional handyman is one of those stereotypical “real jobs”.