16: Creativity in crisis: exploring the harsh reality of creative work in 2021

And why I want to be a writer despite it all.

A few weeks ago, my mom forwarded me the Harvard Business Review tip of the day, a now regular occurrence in an effort to bolster my job search. The premise of this tip was “don’t follow your passion,” but rather choose something that you can be challenged by and learn from. I have sat with this advice since then — confronting my own career goals, wondering if the jobs I spend so much time chasing are worthwhile or even possible.

Around the age of 8 or 9, I decided I wanted to be a fashion designer. Prior to this, I tended to gravitate towards the jobs of scientists, doctors, or detectives. This transition was not a complete shock, though, in that I had always been preoccupied with the feminine — hair always as long as my mom allowed, a strong preference for dresses, and a love for dolls. But I think that this was the first time I elected a dream job not just because it was interesting to me and I liked to read about it in books, but because even at that young age I understood that fashion design connoted something larger and more glamorous. Whereas medicine and mysteries piqued my curiosity, I associated the idea of being a designer with a lifestyle of luxury and immutable personal characteristics: elegance, imagination, grace.

My goals have evolved over time — fashion designer turned into fashion magazine editor turned into writer — but the romanticization of the cultural and creative industries has remained. If I am honest with myself, I want to work in a creative role not just because I love writing or think my skillset is best suited to that type of job, but also partially because it fits into a whole lifestyle that that I have imagined for myself. One where I live in a cute little apartment in a major city and have dinner parties with my similarly creative friends and am constantly creatively and intellectually stimulated and Living My Best Life. One where I am “free” of the constraints of a 9-5 office job or the expectations of a traditional domestic role. For me and the many others who strive for creative work, these jobs are not just a way to make a living, but a way to make a new self.

I think women in particular are sold the idea that we can “have it all,” though I think that what that “all” is has changed. Instead of a stable career and family, “having it all” now often means having a fulfilling job and a lifestyle that complements it. Think “girl boss” culture and the allure of being a strong, sexy, independent woman who wants for nothing and is committed to her often-glamorous career. This is not to say that the former definition is invalid, but rather the myth has widened to encompass multiple unrealistic realities. Because that’s precisely what “having it all” is — a myth.

There’s also the rise of individualization and cosmopolitanism — forces that detach people from “traditional attachments to family, kinship, community or region,” leading them to “find that work must become a fulfilling mark of self” as scholar Angela McRobbie notes in “Clubs to Companies: Notes on the Decline of Political Culture in Speeded Up Creative Worlds.” Especially as young people continue to flock to urban centers, having a creative career becomes a signifier of culture, sophistication, and worldliness. What one lacks in ties to a place or people, they can make up in professional and social networks that revolve around their work.

In this glorification of creative work, though, the bleak realities are often obscured, and subsequently allowed to persist and worsen over time. As a result of some of these same forces that make these types of careers appealing alternatives in the first place – McRobbie mentions neoliberalism, individualization, globalization, the list goes on – creative work only becomes increasingly precarious and unstable. Companies and corporations have no need to pay the salaries of full-time staff when they can outsource that labor for cheaper. As a result, elusive full-time work only gets harder to find as the gig economy takes over, and many are forced to transition to freelance and self-employment.

While these modes of work are often touted for their flexibility, that flexibility is impossible to divorce from instability. Striking out on your own, yes, can offer working from home, flexible scheduling, and more creative control, but more notably it means a complete lack of any benefits or safety nets. It’s not enough now to just be a writer — you have to be a writer, accountant, marketer, strategist, and the list goes on. Some people may appreciate the ability to take on different kinds of project and the departure from routine, but this means constantly hunting for new work and juggling several jobs at the same time to make even a fraction of what a salaried employee earns. It’s not fair to frame the decision to go freelance as a choice — that would insinuate that both options are equally possible. For many young creative workers, a full-time gig will never be a reality. It doesn’t matter how hard someone works — there simply are not enough opportunities (at least in the major creative establishments), and the ones that do exist often go to people who are already successful and had a full-time job in the first place.

The gig economy has also led to informality in the creative industries. Again, this only serves to create more instability. It also means that the process of securing that unstable work in the first place is an ever-moving goal post. Unlike other types of work where the process is more straightforward (though I realize this is a gross oversimplification) — get a certain degree, apply at a designated time to designated companies, interview, start job – many creative jobs are found as a result of informal networks, often formed and strengthened out of office and off the clock. But when creative work hinges on exclusivity, as so much of it does, it can be impossible to penetrate these networks in the first place. Some recommend freelancing for a while and the building up contacts who can get you a salaried position. Others say it’s impossible to freelance without building a network in a full-time creative job first. There is no consensus, no secret to success; just stumbling in the dark until you can hopefully find the light.

These unspoken rules are especially impossible for marginalized groups to figure out, people who have been kept out of these knowledges and understandings. When this is coupled with the lack of protection more stable or regulated forms of employment could possibly provide, it is a recipe for systemic exclusion. This is glaringly wrong for a number of reasons, but especially when considering much of what is profitable for the creative industries requires stealing from Black and queer cultures or exploiting women. The fetishization of “the grind” also tends to erase working class people when it requires taking unpaid work or relying on supplementary income. As someone who has done two unpaid internships and was only able to do so as a result of my class privilege, I regret in some way being complicit in unpaid labor. I thought I was doing what was best for my career, but I have come to understand that this is not only unfair for others who don’t have the means to do the same, but also that it was not at all the springboard to steady employment that it was sold to me as. There is no glamor in '“struggle” or “grind.” People deserve to be paid for their work — period.

On top of all of this, creativity is a tricky thing to commodify. It can’t neatly be mapped onto a typical five-day work week, scheduled into the day in 2-hour chunks. Even though I think creativity can flourish under pressure and constraints, I don’t know if that holds up when that output is meant to be sustained over years or even decades. I only write for this newsletter every other week, and even then, it’s not always easy to regulate my creative energies enough to perfectly time them to my designated publishing day.

After all of this, it seems unlikely that I would still be tempted to dip my feet into the waters of creative work. Yet I still want to despite myself. Of course, the things I have studied and the few work experiences I have had lend themselves to more creative types of jobs, but it would be just as viable to use those skills elsewhere. I continue to mull over the tip my mom sent me, thinking of things that I could maybe be content doing while still managing to save time for my real passions. Maybe this would allow these deep-seated interests of mine to remain untainted by career pressures. But this life already demands so much from us — is it really unwise to aspire to commit the majority of my waking hours to something I genuinely care about, something that excites and fulfills me? Maybe. I don’t doubt that I lack perspective and insight that only working full-time for years can give you.

I said earlier that “having it all” is a myth, and I think the way it is conceptualized now is. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. I do not think it has to be impossible to have fulfilling work while still maintaining strong community and ties, or to create more access to creative jobs, or to compensate people fairly for their time and energy. But I do not think these things are possible within our current systems. Maybe what I am saying is that my qualm extends beyond any single creative job to the structures that perpetuate instability, low pay, and exclusivity. I cannot offer a quick fix for these problems, only fertile ground for hope — hope for a better, more equitable future that doesn’t force us to choose between means and meaning.

A reading list should you be interested in reading more about creative work:

• Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries by Angela McRobbie (2016)

• “Creative labor, cultural work, and individualization” by Jim McGuigan (2010)

• Gender and Creative Labor edited by Rosalind Gill and Stephanie Taylor (2015)

• “Informal creative labour practices: A relational work perspective” by Ana Alacovska (2018)

• As I’ve written about in other missives, I am on an organization kick. I noticed a couple of people on Twitter singing the praises of Notion, an integrative productivity and workspace app. Upon downloading it, I was immediately hooked. Notion combines text, databases, photos, and more to make it a one-stop-shop for your work. While it definitely has a bit of a learning curve, I’ve enjoyed using something that is so customizable to my own needs and workload. Whether you’re a student, work full-time, or just need a space to plan your life, I’d recommend giving it a go and seeing how you can fit it into your organizational ecosystem. I’ve even managed to create a digital bullet journal, something I’ve been trying to figure out how to do for years. While I’m not abandoning Google Docs or my Notes app just yet, I can see this overtaking the rest of my smorgasboard of productivity tools. If anyone wants a template, hit me up.

  

  

• I started listening to C. Tangana a couple years ago after hearing him feature on Becky G’s infectious song “Booty.” The Madrid rapper dropped a new album last weekly, aptly titled El Madrileño. My favorites, however, don’t feature much rapping and show off C. Tangana’s versatility as an artist. I love “Un Veneno – G Mix” and “Te Olvidaste” – honorable mention to “Guille Asesino,” a single that didn’t make the cut for the longer project.

• After many Twitter conversations about grooming and the release of the Britney Spears documentary, I found these two pieces about sexuality, power, and consent to be extremely insightful. The first is Tavi Gevinson’s “Britney Spears was never in control,” an essay complicating the narrative that Britney Spears had the power and knowledge to make the decisions she did as a 16-year-old. Gevinson weaves in her own story of abuse and assault to illustrate that despite the fact that young women are capable and autonomous, it’s difficult for them to fully understand the power dynamics at play when it comes to sexuality and beyond. The second is a book review by Anna Leszkiewicz of Katherine Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again. The book and its review argue that centering consent in discussions of sex can be reductive and not account for the figurative messiness of the act. Both Gevinson’s and Leszkiewicz’s writing explore the nuances of young women’s sexuality that can often get lost among hyper-sex-positive discourses that assert that any display of sexuality by a young girl is empowerment. They highlight that choices are not made in vacuums, that young girls are not immune to coercion on societal or individual levels, that consent is only the beginning of a much larger conversation.

  “Even young women who are not megafamous have typically picked up on what makes them appear valuable by the age of 15. Their capacity to perpetuate these standards doesn’t mean they are not also victims of these standards. If anything, it shows how girls’ bodies and sexuality are so deeply regulated by a society that despises women and fetishizes youth that some of us learned how to carry out its work all on our own.”

• I have tried to minimize my interest in astrology for a while now, afraid I would be judged for liking something that is often seen as frivolous or meaningless. But no more! I like astrology and think, like a lot of things, it has its applications. If people are so irked by someone’s choice to find meaning in something so harmless, I think that reveals more about them than it does about astrology itself. Anyway! I just subscribed to Astro Poets and Astrology for Writers on Substack – if you also have any interest in the cosmos, I recommend looking into them. The Astro Poets newsletter is an offshoot of the titular Twitter account – you may have seen their weekly horoscope poems floating around your timeline. Astrology for Writers is a bit more niche, obviously targeted toward people who write, but I think that the posts about the major transits and astrological happenings are useful for anyone.

• Welsh Landscapes is a little virtual exhibit put on by Google Arts and Culture. It only takes a minute to scroll through and gives some history about the small country along the way. The beautiful landscape paintings are perfect for a moment of escapism.