POV: You're truly the starving artist

Back when I worked in corporate, I would wave off doing anything creative in favor of chasing the bag. But girlbossing wasn't for me — choosing creativity over that corporate job and six-figure salary was the right call, I guess.

It's true that most of the old white guys we tout as the authors of Great American Classics™ had wives typing their manuscripts, cooking their dinner, cleaning the house, and paying the bills. But we're in the age of social media and self-publishing, where it's possible to garner a following and get your book booking as a solo act! No book deal needed, so long as you can pay your way.

I'm gonna be honest with you, though; I am broke at the moment. It isn't hyperbole for me to say that salaried jobs — where I sit in a freezing-cold stable of cubicles, under fluorescent lights, with 6-10 very loud people who talk shit the second I leave the room — was a serious threat to my life. So I quit, with no plan whatsoever other than to work as a freelancer as my mental health allows.

When I'm really struggling for cash, I'll apply to full-time gigs with short-term contracts. But finding a communications job? In this economy? When everybody's making ChatGPT do their LinkedIn posts for them?!

I think about Redbelt all the time lately. An early role of Chiwetel Ejiofor's, it's one of my comfort films. He plays Mike Terry, a martial artist with a struggling jiu jitsu school whose heroic act lands him a job in the film industry.

Whenever I feel disillusioned about my financial situation, I'm reminded of this conversation between Mike and his wife Sondra (played by Alica Braga):

Sondra: My father made money, my brothers make money, and you are somehow too pure. You're too pure to compete.
Mike: It...
Sondra: Weakens the fighter?
Mike: That's right.
Sondra: Because a competition is not a fight.
Mike: That's correct.
Sondra: And what about the fighter's family, Mike? What do they eat, while he's being so pure?

So many neurodivergent artists struggle with being 'too pure' for the rat race. We want to live with integrity, and do things that matter to us, personally. Some would, and do, call that selfish.

I certainly feel selfish sometimes. I enjoy my morning writing sessions as if I'm Mark Twain, holed up in my finely-adorned study while the smell of my wife's biscuits and coffee rise up from the kitchen. Every day I write like rent isn't due, like I'm not chilling in a studio apartment, or living on the good graces of a therapist who keeps checking in even though my bill is late late, or Venmoing the same $15 back and forth between my other broke friends.

Being broke sucks. I like nice things. I miss catching flights.

I really, really miss chirashi bowls.

But if it's one thing I've learned from going from homeless teen to six-figure earner and back down again, it's that for neurodivergent creatives, the artistic integrity vs money battle is real, and what goes around, comes around. Spending every waking moment worrying doesn't solve a goddamn thing.

During my autistic burnout recovery, I realized I used to shove my creative projects under the bed to chase after money, collecting shiny things like a crow in a nest of baubles. But I do have to admit that, yes, I am "too pure." That doesn't mean I deserve to be poor; it means I owe it to myself to seek out something better.