The Wages of Wage Servitude
Well, here’s what shoulve have been Friday’s page – Even this took me longer than I expected to finish off, despite my having drawn and inked it on Monday evening.
I’m finding more and more that work is cutting into my art time, and it’s getting incredibly frustrating. Of course, even though it’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life, I want to do the right thing and do the best possible job while I’m at work. But that work is getting incredibly draining. Either I’m working extra hours that directly mean I don’t get enough time to both illustrate/write AND have dinner before I collapse in a heap in bed, or I’m working extra hours which means that I’m too exhausted to do anything at the weekend. Just this week, I had to work until 2000 on Friday evening finishing something off for a client. I then had to go and do my weekly shop, which somehow took me up to 2130. Then, the bus didn’t show up until 2230. So, to nobody’s surprise, instead of finishing off the penultimate page of Bonnie Words (which I’m considering my first real step towards professional publication) on Saturday, I spent the day sleeping, complaining to my family, and generally trying to de-stress.
It’s hard, y’know? Most other artists I know seem to work jobs that they can leave at the office/shop/call-centre, and not have to do much in the way of extra work. They have the ability to switch cleanly between work drone and artist. Likewise, I don’t think work really appreciates the fact that when I go home in the evening, I don’t get to sit down and recharge. I’m on the go almost all of the time – Friday’s supposed to be my relaxtion evening, and when that gets eaten into, everything I do suffers.
Anyway, rant over for now. Maybe this week will be less chaotic, and I can go back to my usual routine. I can’t give up on art – to do so would be absolutely catastrophic for my psyche.
M.
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