I’ve been in a weird place creatively for several years. Most creatives need to juggle their passion projects from their paying projects: those they do for love and enjoyment, and those they do to pay the bills. Often, the more they hate the work, the more they feel they need to charge. So there’s a balance between high value, well-paid creative work and spurious shavings of *anything* they can sell.
I managed to build a platform but was tired of working with clients, so I started focusing on courses and digital projects; and this has been fine, though the money isn’t as good, I have a lot of time to do what I want to do, with much less stress or pressure.
But inevitably a few times a year, I’ll get someone who needs more help and just wants to pay me to do everything for them. I’ve resisted this idea.
Years ago I wrote a post (and even made a book cover!) called “Not for sale”. Last year I wrote a post called “don’t hire me.” I’m still struggling with this, because:
A) people need the help only I can provide
B) other people are charging way too much
I could charge very decent rates to do the work people want to pay me for.
But I’d rather not.
I’m kind of like the infuriating character in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the employee who just responds to every work-related request with
“I’d prefer not to.”
This is the weird space within which I exist, but I think tonight I stumbled on a simple explanation, if not a solution.
It’s true I need money to survive.
But I don’t need YOUR money.
I have a right to fire clients, just as employees are realizing they can fire their bosses. Before the pandemic, this was crassly referred to as “FU money” – to build a freelance side-gig big enough to tell your boss to go screw himself.
After the pandemic, it’s no longer about having an alternative source of income. It’s more desperate than that. It’s about being treated as a human being, as a person of value; about not being abused and exploited for corporate greed.
Companies have long tried to make quitting difficult for employees; most Americans have little savings and are forced to work because otherwise, they couldn’t afford healthcare, education or child support – all things guaranteed and provided by many other nations that are absent in the USA.
I wrote several posts recently about the general apathy and malaise I’m feeling, which I think is broad and deep and shared. I can’t say the pandemic is the reason I often don’t check my emails for a week, but it hasn’t helped, either. I usually respond to most queries with something along the lines of
“I could help you, but I won’t…”
This feels honest, but also embarrassing for me, and I know I’m letting people down, but it’s my truth.
I could help you, but this stuff is much better done on your own; I could help you but my time is more valuable than you should reasonable invest in your project; I could help you but I’m writing a vampire fantasy – or simply binging Netflix for a week eating cake and folding into my couch cushions.
I’m not desperate enough to exchange my time for your money.
I’m not yet willing to sell tasks I hate doing, and I’m learning to provide services I enjoy instead.
There’s also a moral aspect I suppose: I refuse to sell you things that won’t work at any price, even though others will; I’d rather you consume my books/courses/videos and learn this stuff yourself because you’re really going to need it if you want to be successful, and paying me to do it once won’t solve your long term challenges (and may even slow your growth).
This discomfort translates mostly to avoidance.
Some people are used to more expedient correspondence, and they sometimes get upset. Maybe they send several emails a day or find me on Facebook and urge me to get back to them. It’s not their fault, but they are assuming that as a potential new client thinking about giving me money, I already owe them my time and enthusiasm.
I’m very good at entertaining possibilities, so I enjoy discussing potentialities – but that doesn’t mean I’m committing to them. I’m a font of great ideas and seeds of creative insight, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stick around and help you plant and cultivate them.
Ultimately, this is a me problem, not a you problem… and something I’ve been swimming around for the past decade. If I was giving myself advice, it would be basic and obvious:
Do what you love until it pays off.
John Galt’s speech in the Fountainhead
Re-reading John Galt’s speech in the Fountainhead is illuminating, so I thought I’d share some here. Basically it’s about artists and intellectuals refusing to let their mind and work be exploited, in order to “stop the motor of the world.” I think we could argue this is happening. Weird though because Ayn Rand is basically arguing against socialism, and for capitalism (in my understanding at least); but she’s talking about a select few, not the majority. When socialism was getting started, there were marxist terrorist plots, but mostly it was about establishing unions and fair work/pay rules.
Still, I love most of this creative language, and especially the final command in the last paragraph:
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.
Here’s most of the speech so you can reflect or get a sense of all this. Creative people, workers, and humans in general – but especially those geniuses who change the world – are often burdened with other people’s care and welfare (even in the basic sense of people thinking you are selfish or conceited when you’d devote so much of your personal time, effort, energy and finances into a creative “hobby” that friends and family don’t get). Competent, capable people are expected to share their skills and knowledge (or perhaps, that’s something in my upbringing that is slowing me down, and I obviously just need to get more comfortable charging what I’m worth….
“I am speaking to those who desire to live and to recapture the honor of their soul. Now that you know the truth about your world stop supporting your own destroyers. The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction to give it. Withdraw your sanction. Withdraw your support. Do not try to live on your enemies’ terms or to win at a game where they’re setting the rules. Do not seek the favor of those who enslaved you, do not beg for alms from those who have robbed you, be it subsidies, loans or jobs, do not join their team to recoup what they’ve taken by helping them rob your neighbors. One cannot hope to maintain one’s life by accepting bribes to condone one’s destruction. Do not straggle for profit, success or security at the price of a lien on your right to exist. Such a lien is not to be paid off; the more you pay them, the more they will demand; the greater the values you seek or achieve, the more vulnerably helpless you become.”
“Do you wish to continue a struggle that consists of clinging to precarious ledges in a sliding descent to the abyss, a struggle where the hardships you endure are irreversible and the victories you win bring you closer to destruction? Or do you wish to undertake a struggle that consists of rising from ledge to ledge in a steady ascent to the top, a struggle where the hardships are investments in your future, and the victories bring you irreversibly closer to the world of your moral ideal, and should you die without reaching full sunlight, you will die on a level touched by its rays? Such is the choice before you. Let your mind and your love of existence decide.”
“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this word to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.”
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”
“The first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself—and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul’s shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.”
“I am speaking to those who desire to live and to recapture the honor of their soul. Now that you know the truth about your world stop supporting your own destroyers. The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction to give it. Withdraw your sanction. Withdraw your support. Do not try to live on your enemies’ terms or to win at a game where they’re setting the rules. Do not seek the favor of those who enslaved you, do not beg for alms from those who have robbed you, be it subsidies, loans or jobs, do not join their team to recoup what they’ve taken by helping them rob your neighbors. One cannot hope to maintain one’s life by accepting bribes to condone one’s destruction. Do not straggle for profit, success or security at the price of a lien on your right to exist. Such a lien is not to be paid off; the more you pay them, the more they will demand; the greater the values you seek or achieve, the more vulnerably helpless you become.”
“Do you wish to continue a struggle that consists of clinging to precarious ledges in a sliding descent to the abyss, a struggle where the hardships you endure are irreversible and the victories you win bring you closer to destruction? Or do you wish to undertake a struggle that consists of rising from ledge to ledge in a steady ascent to the top, a struggle where the hardships are investments in your future, and the victories bring you irreversibly closer to the world of your moral ideal, and should you die without reaching full sunlight, you will die on a level touched by its rays? Such is the choice before you. Let your mind and your love of existence decide.”
“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this word to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”
Who is John Galt?
This is a recurring theme in the book, so let me make a lame attempt at a comparison: John Galt is a symbol for that unique, personal creativity and without him and those like him, carrying and sharing the beacon of progress, society would grind to a halt. There’s a comparison to be made here, about new AI tools and our shared humanity.
Who is really human? Can AI actually be truly creative, or is there some spark of “humanity” that has a quality and essence that is worth more for reasons? Will humanity be replaced when all tasks can be automated? Or do we have another purpose?
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.
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