Reply To: When employers won’t, or can’t help

[Patte Rosebank]

@Evelyn, it’s not a pity party at all.  Talking to someone about what’s troubling you is the best way to feel better.  Especially when the person you’re talking with has had a similar experience.

So much of what you’ve described is like what I’ve been through.

After graduating with a B.A. in English, I had years of bouncing from office temp. job to office temp. job.  (Did you know that temp. agencies take much higher commissions than showbiz agents do, even though they’re doing the same job, just in different industries?)

Like you, I have plenty of creative skills, but no official credentials to prove it.  This makes me feel inadequate and like an imposter.  It can also make it harder to get hired…but in the arts, your portfolio or demo or audition tend to be more important than what’s on your resume.

 

You and I both have trouble with the administrative side of being a freelance artist.  All that “distasteful” stuff, like self-promotion, accounts receivable, bookkeeping…  And, of course, getting started and working gradually through a job, instead of waiting until the last minute and just throwing it together in a panic.

A friend of mine is a freelance writer.  Last year, she was thrilled to be asked to ghost-write the book, “Concussed”, because it meant working on a very worthwhile project with some of the hockey legends she’d always admired.  She also does freelance “lifestyle” articles for magazines and newspapers, and for the Society for International Hockey Research.

 

You know, Evelyn, now that we have the internet, it’s possible for writers and graphic artists to do work for companies all over the world, without leaving home.  There’s a lot of voice work being done this way too.

I narrate audiobooks in my tiny home-studio here in Toronto, for a publisher located in British Columbia.  I send them the digital files over the internet; they edit and “sweeten” them, and send them through cyberspace to another publishing company, located in Michigan.  This is just one of my jobs.  I’m also a freelance costumer and singer, and I work as a Captain/Stage Door Keeper at a theatre.

I love the variety, but the work is sporadic, with some really busy weeks, and other weeks with almost nothing at all.  I have to work as much as I can when it’s busy, and save as much money as possible, to take me through the lean times.  I think I finally have the hang of it.

As a confirmed singleton, I don’t have a safety net, but I also don’t have a mortgage or car payments or kids to worry about.  So it balances out.

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