During the past few days I’ve been thinking about art and money, about ways to be entrepreneurial while working with art. (Contemplating such things has even entailed posting on my neglected curatorial Tumblr.)
I love the idea of being an art broker, or a dealer, or whatever the correct term is for a person who represents artists and sells their work. The whim has caught me and it’s bouncing around in my brain.
Of course, I love the idea, but I would probably be bad at dealing art. Go-get-’em sales-sense is not my forte. I can be relatively charming but hawking wares makes me squeamish. The hard-sell approach is painful.
Ten-cent painting (see what I did there?) by Jason McHenry.
ArtBusiness.com has this subject locked down and reading those articles did not make me feel like selling art is lucrative. Not that I’m surprised. People do it for love, not money, like writing. Spoiler alert: creative pursuits don’t make you rich unless you’re incredibly lucky and at least somewhat talented. “Starving artist” is a valid cliche.
The devil on my shoulder — we’re all born with one, I think — discourages every fantasy. I can’t decide if it’s practical or defeatist.
I am a young writer by every definition, twenty-one and relatively inexperienced. My ideas for my career are half-formed. Accordingly, this is an education-heavy portion of my life, which is good. I’m not going to college like many of my peers, but I am actively learning and developing myself as an editorial professional (broadly speaking).
Part of that is working, part of it is reading, and an increasingly large part is listening — not only to people in my “real” life, but also listening to wise strangers who aren’t addressing me specifically. For instance, I pay close attention to the journalists interviewed by Max Linsky, Aaron Lammer, and Evan Ratliff on the Longform podcast. (Only a few months ago, I didn’t like podcasts, but that opinion changed quickly after I acquired a commute.)
I don’t have access to many professional writers in my “real” life. Sure, occasionally I hang out with Adam Brinklow and I got to meet Yael Grauer the other day, but mostly I encounter regular people with a bunch of different types of jobs. Which is fine — variety is the spice of life, right? Only interacting with one type of person would be like having salt on your food and eschewing all over flavors.
But I dearly want to feel connected to people who do the work I aspire to. The Longform podcast gives me a window into the circumstances and habits of journalists I admire, and it feels… nourishing. It makes me believe the career I’m in love with is possible.
It’s awesome that the internet enables this. I know it was technically possible back when people mainly read words on paper, but not in the same way, at the same scale, or on demand. In 1985 I couldn’t have Twitter-followed everyone who wrote an article I liked, to keep up with their future posts and maybe talk to them personally. Being able to do that is so cool — and it helps me stay motivated.
I just finished my first week of full-time work at a “normal” job. Before this Monday I was freelancing, which is very different from being part of an office team. Now I drive to Novato every morning, talk to the same people all day, and figure out new processes that will hopefully become second nature soon… After seven days of doing this, I’m still scared and excited. Also tired and invigorated.
The company is small, so I have a lot of responsibility — meaning a lot of power. Not in the sense that I order other people around, but in the sense that my choices matter. Thankfully my decisions don’t have life-or-death repercussions, but they do affect success or failure. Correctly deployed, my skills and focus can make the business function better. That’s a very cool feeling. Freelancing didn’t feel that way, except pertaining to my own ability to keep writing for money. In this new job, people are counting on me to take care of their projects — both my boss and our clients.
I have so, so much to learn. On Friday the boss treated everyone to dinner at a local restaurant, and he said to me and the other new employee, “You guys had a big download this week.” That’s a good way to put it. The sheer amount of information we were given was overwhelming and at first the content was incomprehensible. Slowly, I’m getting the hang of things.
I’m slightly more useful at work than a toddler. But not, like, a lot more useful. Photo by Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería.
I am an editorial project manager. That’s my title. Basically, my job is to bring books into being. Which is awesome! As I said at the interview, “This is a dream job. I didn’t know this job still existed.” I assumed that most of the publishing jobs were gone because there’s so much pressure on the industry now. Luckily, I was wrong!
The company I work for is ORO Editions, which publishes architecture and design books by some damn prestigious authors. (For example: the journal Landscape Architecture Plus, which I’ll be proofreading.) We also have two other imprints, academically focused Applied Research and Design Publishing and popular-interest Goff Books. Some of the subjects our authors address are totally fascinating.
So far, the only downside is that I miss writing. I’ll have to figure out how to keep it in my daily schedule.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about computers making people’s jobs obsolete. Zeynep Tufekci writes in The New York Times, “Yes, the machines are getting smarter, and they’re coming for more and more jobs.” Okay, everybody panic.
But wait—if a huge swathe of the people who formerly had disposable income are unemployed, it’ll wreak havoc on the economy. When people don’t have money to buy things/services, businesses will stop making things and providing services. Supply and demand, right?
Purely hypothetical example: Whole Foods lays off a logistics analyst because software does the job faster, cheaper, and possibly better. The unemployed analyst can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods anymore. Therefore Whole Foods has lost a customer because of its new software.
Picture this happening on a massive scale, and consider the cross-company effects. Laid-off analysts or middle managers — or whoever — also can’t afford Apple products, or fancy branded clothes, or [insert product purchased with disposable income, frivolous or not].
Am I missing something here? I feel like this is a big problem with the idea that computers are going to take all the jobs and we won’t figure out new occupations for people. If you have thoughts on this, please actually respond!
The Facebook comments are interesting, as is the thought my dad posted below.
A key tenet of capitalism is that there is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Even literal free lunches, which church groups dispense to homeless people, must be subsidized by money-earning workers, who have to purchase their own midday meals as well as someone else’s. When the food seems free, it just means the costs are hidden.
Even those of us who object to capitalism must accept the No Free Lunch principle. Plucking fruit from a wild apple tree might seem like a free lunch, but it isn’t. The labor in that scenario is low-cost, but free would be if an apple materialized in your mouth, pre-chewed. When you gather fruit from a wild orchard, the low energy output returns a low gain. Four apples is not a good lunch!
This is all just cause and effect, but it’s very unpleasant. We want the free lunch. We are both wired and socialized to find free lunch desirable. It’s not bad to pine for a zero-dollar footlong sandwich instead of Subway’s famous fiver. At least, it’s not bad until you start scheming.
Scheming leads nowhere. Work is the only tactic with a reliable payoff. I am very disappointed by the whole setup.
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