Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at [email protected] at any time. Previous installments can be found here.
Hi Aunt Acid,
I have quite a lot of creative and artistic friends, working in various bits of fashion and art and culture and design. I don’t have such a job — I work in a mildly interesting, stable office job in a sector that is interesting and fun for me.
Sometimes my friends are going through a bad time with their jobs — they’ve changed jobs and it’s not going well, or they’re struggling to meet their sales targets or they didn’t get the place in the exhibition they wanted. Normal things for people working those kinds of jobs I guess?
Obviously I try and be sympathetic and empathetic whenever I hear about these things but sometimes I don’t know how big a deal to make of it or exactly what the right things to say are?
My career flow is boring and stable and I don’t have the same jumble of big wins and backslides that a lot of my friends do. When those friends who work similar jobs to me have issues I know the dynamics and what to say and find it a bit easier.
What’s the best way of being sympathetic and supportive to people that I care about but whose work lives I don’t really understand properly?
Thanks,
Struggling to support
You, STS, are the 20th century trying to understand the 21st. Yes, you are the not-so-recent shimmering past, when a “mildly interesting, stable office job” was something to which most white-collar workers could aspire. Have you been at the same place for more than three consecutive years? Have you risen in the ranks without undue drama or numerous horizontal jumps from one ladder to another? My God, do you have a pension to look forward to?
Please let me buy you a coffee and you can tell me how you did it.
OK, I understand that you have a problem. Or you think you do. You are somewhat mystified by and yet want to be able to empathize with today’s ruffians, we who flit from gig to gig because either we are free-spirited entrepreneurial creatives (self-starters) or self-centered, solipsistic commitment-phobes (snowflakes), depending on whom you ask.
Your friends are the bohemians of whom Dorothy Parker once wrote, “Authors and actors and artists and such / Never know nothing, and never know much,” the hip, once fringe-y types who have become, to some degree, the norm — at least in cities like New York, populating myriad cultural properties from “Girls” to the brilliant new novel A Little Life. Viz:
Art was something that was just an accessory to a lifestyle. You painted or sculpted or made crappy installation pieces because it justified a wardrobe of washed-soft T-shirts and dirty jeans and a diet of ironic cheap American beers and ironic expensive hand-rolled American cigarettes. …
These were the days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.
As Dorothy Parker concluded three-quarters of a century ago about a problem that has only worsened with time, “God, for a man who solicits insurance!”
What are your obligations to the freelancers and the fashionistas, the baristas and the bartenders to whom you find it difficult to relate? Why, very little. You are probably doing already everything they, or anyone could, expect of you. Do you listen to their stories and occasionally say “Wow”? Do you sympathize when they encounter adversity and cheer them on when they overcome it? Can you share in the bitter, bursting fruits of their outrage even when you find it mystifying? Then you are being a Good Friend. Really, I promise. You are exemplary.
We do not need to fully understand each other’s worlds, to speak each other’s jargon and breathe each other’s air, to support one another. My best friend runs marathons for fun; she even pays for the privilege. For these and other habits, I think she’s battier than a dugout, and she, of course, thinks I am, for other reasons that she can disclose when she has an advice column. Nonetheless, we love each other like dragons.
Your friends, at least your close friends, probably love you like dragons too, regardless of the occasional blunder you may experience when discussing things about which you cannot be expected to know much. To anyone but an asshole, good-faith effort excuses awkwardness. Especially if you own your awkwardness and say you’re aware of it and are doing your best.
Ask questions when you need to. Tell them, “That sounds rough,” when something does. That’s all there is to it.
One last thought. When I start fixating on whether I am being a Good Enough Friend to somebody or other, it is often a sign that I am, perversely, hurt that said person is not being a very good friend to me. My mind has a tendency to take my disappointment in another person and twist it around into anxiety directed at myself, since that is an emotion with which I am both more familiar and more comfortable.
If you are like me in this, allow me to suggest that what lies behind your question is not a fear that you are not being a Good Enough Friend, but rather sadness that somebody or other is not being a Good Enough Friend to you. I hope, for example, that when you refer to your work situation as “boring,” it is not because one of your artistic companions has dared to suggest as much. Stability in a job is in fact 1) enviable, 2) what makes the world go round, and 3) in any event, your choice, and worthy of respect.
I hope that the self-starter / snowflakes in your circle put as much effort into saying “Wow” to your stories as you do to theirs, and that they also make you feel listened to, sympathized with, and valued. If they don’t, please call them on their bullshit. They will be the better for it — as individuals and as friends.
Love,
Aunt Acid
“We love each other like dragons” is one of the best descriptions of friendship I’ve ever read. (Also, A Little Life is so good and so difficult and I want one of the tote bags SO VERY BADLY)
I have 10 hours on a plane coming to me in the near future and am saving A Little Life for it and it will be the best flight anyone’s ever taken but also the worst, if The People In The Trees is anything to go by, which I know in some ways it’s not, but I care not.
Haha, yes, I sobbed multiple times, so I hope you have an indulgent seatmate. 😀
Buffered in the window by spouse & kid, who are long used to my bawling as I read.
Hmm. I also detect a touch of envy in the LW, which doesn’t make them a bad person– and I can say this because I also have a “boring,” “stable” office job (truly, there are very jobs which are seen as boring and stable that actually ARE boring and stable so I join Aunt Acid in congratulating you if you’ve found one of them). So the question is: do you sometimes, kind of, want to be out there making Art too?
Something to think about. If not, this is a 20-something problem. This is when you sit down to pay your electric bill and your BFF is G-chatting you from a hostel in Peru. I can’t always relate to those problems either. But it sounds like you’re doing your best on the friend front, so hopefully your friends auditioning for avant-garde theatre are also making an effort to understand your life.
Having a boring, stable job is a great opportunity to make art on your free time (I know as I have a boring, stable job and do so). If I had to make a living on art I imagine I would be hugely stressed and probably not find it fun anymore. So if that is the case, it’s something to think about too.
The majority of Art Makers I know (who continue Making Art past the first couple of bohemian years, anyway) have boring, stable jobs. Because Art and Cash ain’t the dragon-friends at all.
I have also found that Art Makers still in those couple of bohemian years have a tendency to bemoan their dire fates a good bit, especially to the stable job pals, because Suffering is Superior.
But I’m an old (Art Making) cynic in that regard. I’ve done the bohemian years thing, and I’ve done decades of the stable job thing, and now I get to have my cake and eat it all day long, because I can afford to sit around and Make Art without having a day job, which truly makes me Superior (and slightly Annoying, I suspect.)
No doubt! And that is clearly the best possible option to be in so you are, in fact Superior!
And then there’s the Starving Artists who wouldn’t be starving at all, except they spend 12 hours out of the day not making and selling art but playing internet poker and talking about how a day job is too much for their delicate artistic sensibilities.
I think you might be on to something there. And I think you’re right that a little envy is normal and not necessarily a bad thing.
I’ve had similar issues on occasion with my partner of many years. (I’m an attorney with a steady office job, and he’s a self-employed musician and adjunct professor). We both have our “grass is greener” moments, where he’s a bit envious of my steady paycheck and retirement plan, or I’m a bit jealous that he can sit at home drinking coffee and reading a book in the afternoon instead of sitting at a desk.
But we try to be mindful that are upsides and downsides to both situations, and we’re very supportive of each other.
There’s some overlap in pretensions but pretty sure the world traveller bohemians have about as much to do with people trying to live as freelance artists as those guys who write thinkpieces for the Times on how hard it is to live on $400k have to do with those Brazillian scavenger kids who live in a burrow they dug in the landfill
My favorites are the articles by people who made millions of dollars selling their internet companies, and have now decided to preach minimalism and living without any possessions because People Today are Too Materialistic.
Yes to the conclusion there. I am in a similar position, and while most of my friends get it – my lifestyle is different to theirs, the stability isn’t a cause for envy and the things that happen to me at work are important too – I have occasionally got the ‘you wouldn’t understand’ vibe from some. One friend often says only half-joking that I should chuck it in and pursue what I love: newsflash, you can make money from graphic design and illustration (his passion), you can’t from experimental poetry (mine). Another person – who I wouldn’t count as a friend but annoyingly we have a lot of mutuals – clearly resents me for having a desk job. As an example of how she responds to me talking about work, when a friend of ours moving to our city said he wanted to have a place sorted before he starts looking for a job, I was like ‘Yeah, having an address is certainly useful when looking for a job!’ the Person snapped ‘For your kind of job maybe’ as if I were being horribly bourgeois.
Anyway, my first thought when I started reading the letter was that it’s probably them being dismissive of her job, making her think she’s responding in the wrong way to theirs somehow. You’re probably doing fine, letter writer, and it’s OK to ask them to take an interest in you too.
By the way, one of my friends at the most extreme end of this (illustrator in a constantly precarious financial situation) is also always the most positive about my work and the most interested in what I have to say about it. So it’s certainly not beyond their capacity.
This is super real. I work a stable, tech job, one of my roommates works a stable, tech job, and my third roommate works a combo of retail + running her own creative business. The most common awkwardness relates to scheduling: suggesting that we do something on a night or weekend before remembering that her job doesn’t exactly stop for nights or weekends. But I think we’re all pretty good to each other– she’s an attentive listener even when we “talk shop,” and we celebrate big wholesale orders and commiserate the extra work that comes with big wholesale orders, and so on. We all obviously respect one another, so minor slip ups are quickly resolved.
I have had friends who all but explicitly told me my life path was “boring” or the “easy way out,” though. I remember just taking it on the chin– it’s hard not to, I mean, they had a point– but I wish I’d had this advice in college.
Those friends sound mean, or at least very out of touch. It’s not an “easy way out.” There are people who are killing themselves to achieve stable job/basic middle-class stability, and some who are trying but will never get there.
You and your roommates sound like a great group though.
Ow, that conclusion…that was an eye-opener. I don’t have many of the artsy Bohemian friends, but that concern about being a good friend is an omnipresent feature of my life. Time for a bit of thought.
It also sounds like maybe you want to respond with advice (which I totally understand – I am replying to an advice letter, after all) but since you don’t know what they should do, you don’t know what advice to give. And really, you don’t have to! Take your cues on how big a deal to make from your friends. If they seem to be having a lot of feelings about something, use that as your baseline. If they are just talking about a thing that happened, don’t make it a big deal. Yeah, sometimes your friends will overreact to things, and it might be hard to judge that, but their feelings are legitimate and your job as a friend is to listen to those feelings.
“Congrats, that’s great!” or “I’m sorry, that sounds hard” are gonna be your go-tos for these situations.
This hits close to home, but in a slightly different way. I started my career as a freelance performing arts person. I’ve since gone to grad school, changed careers, and have my own stable(ish) boring (to some) job in a cubicle.
My partner and many of my friends are still in the performing arts, but I’ve lost many friends/acquaintances along the way because it became clear to me that my creative/performer friends fell into two camps: those who were still interested in me and asked questions about my life/career/interests even though I was no longer “one of them,” and those who never bothered to ask – every conversation remained about them and their creative pursuits.
I never expected these friends to fully understand my new field and career challenges, I just wanted them to ask, listen to my answers, and display basic curiosity about something other than their own chosen profession. It sounds like you’re already doing that, LW, and I hope they’re doing the same for you. The more you chat about the various ups and downs, I think the clearer it will become when something they say is a Big Deal and what is just Typical Letdown.
I used to want to turn my passions into a career, live a carefree and artistic life, and not be encumbered by the horrors of a desk job. Then I got my graduate degree, the economy collapsed, and I was unemployed for a year. I now revel in my 10-5:30 desk job, the lists in QuickBooks, and the living wage that lets me do fun, frivolous, and sometimes artistic stuff on my days off. Embrace boring stability, LW. Boring stability is amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn26pEDEhyY
I can relate to a lot of this!
I went to a performing arts high school, and it’s been very interesting (15+ years on) to see what my classmates ended up doing.
A small few are managing to make a living full-time in the arts (e.g., selling paintings, sculptures, etc.), and we turned out one famous actor. But the majority have ended up combining the arts with steadier day jobs– often in rather interesting ways.
For instance, my best friend who studied acting ended up teaching acting and martial arts to kids, and still acts in local plays. Another is a high school English teacher who sings professionally on weekends (for weddings, etc.) One does studio art, commercial work (e.g., murals), and teaches art classes to prisoners.
There are also a bunch with desk jobs who tinker with things on their own time at home. (I still do a bit of drawing and photography on occasion).
When I start fixating on whether I am being a Good Enough Friend to somebody or other, it is often a sign that I am, perversely, hurt that said person is not being a very good friend to me.
This.
This.