Gaps Spaces

It’s a sad reality of the modern age that art (usually) doesn’t pay very well.

Artists at the top of their game can, of course, find great fame and wealth in creative practice, but the reality is that most of us are struggling to hone skill, practice our crafts, write our fiction, and justify expensive equipment purchases in the gaps and spaces of otherwise busy lives.

Work schedules. Parenting duties. Trying to eat well. Doing housework. Commuting. Nurturing  relationships. All of it is important and barring some sociopathic commitment to leaving it all behind to focus on watercolour painting or recording a solo album, most of us are working with the leftovers.

Malcom Gladwell wrote about a famously misinterpreted theory of the ten thousand hour rule in his book Outliers ^[1], which a lot of people took to mean if you do something for ten thousand hours then you will become an expert, tada, wipes hands, mission complete. But the actual basis of that theory is that the people who became successful simply had access to ten thousand free hours because of the support systems in their lives: someone else was paying the bills, caring for the kids, and washing the dishes—all while they honed their craft.

Limited free time to pursue creativity is the norm. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I do have some ideas.

Under the category of Gaps & Spaces, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.