Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
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Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#2https://web.archive.org/web/20210709010638/https://www.nytim...
Shitty advice for you reading pleasure.
Really the advice should be that art is a hobby that you do in your spare time after you earn enough to afford to sponsor yourself. If you get good enough that you can sustain or you are rich enough that you don’t have to than great but it should not be your only path or you will end up a poor debt slave. This isn’t 1960s America of unlimited opportunity folks are fighting for scraps out there.
Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#3Being a parent now, it brings a whole new perspective on this topic. I kinda get where my parents were coming from since money was hard to come by. I think the biggest thing to note is that there's nothing wrong to pursue your dreams or not to meet your parents expectation (most parents want their kids to find happiness after all). But the conversation does change significantly when you have to pursue your dream on your parents' dime.
Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#4https://web.archive.org/web/20210709010638/https://www.nytim... Shitty advice for you reading pleasure. Really the advice should be that art is a hobby that you do in your spare time after you earn enough to afford to sponsor yourself. If you get good enough that you can sustain or you are rich enough that you don’t have to than great but it should not be your only path or you will end up a poor debt slave. This isn’…
No, the article contains rather good advice, and from a range of opinions.
My own advice is to follow the authors example: if your actual dream is something with lottery-like odds, find a way to build a career in an adjacent field to which you can apply genuine interest.
You might not be able to cross that chasm but your odds of happiness - which matters more - are higher than if you try to divide your days or years into earning and living parts.
Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#5DISCLAIMER: Haven't read the article, am intensely affected by post title, sharing a small personal story.
I come from a village of about 150 people. We had to drive 5 km even just to buy a loaf of bread. Everyone's grandmother and most people's mothers know how to make bread but, as is the case for a significant part of tradition, that knowledge is dying out. Nevertheless, we were self-sufficient enough to be growing some of our vegetables, eating our own chicken, making our own olive oil (and wine, not so long ago).
My parents were manual workers from childhood. They didn't want me to be an engineer. To be precise, they never demanded anything specific. "Just ensure a less painful living." That was all there had ever been. And I understood what they meant every time I followed them to the fields from early dawn, and during every summer job.
My father died of Lewy bodies dementia in late 2017. In three months I had graduated, finished an internship, buried my dad and joined the army (obligatory in my country). From a psychological/emotional perspective, it all went downhill for the next 3 years. But I did well, materialistically speaking.
Now I'm 27 years old, doing a PhD. For the last decade I've been constantly chasing financial independence in the real world, and a writing career in the ideal one. I've published some short stories here and there, attended a couple of workshops, read a bunch of the classics. Fancy as those may sound, they don't fit well with narcissistic tendencies, hard times and endlessly postponed gratification.
A joke I've been telling to myself recently is "there you go, your PhD is the book you've always wanted to write". But the truth is that I belong to those lucky fellas who could only dream of a full time artist's vocation. And I very reluctantly confess that letting that dream go was the key to a happier day-to-day life. If the book ever comes, I will welcome it with all of my heart. But until then, I'll be grinding on the Engineer's side.
By the way, my parents are the most astonishing people I've met, and my village is my favorite place in the universe.
Edit: submitted unfinished draft by mistake. Completed.
Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#6https://web.archive.org/web/20210709010638/https://www.nytim... Shitty advice for you reading pleasure. Really the advice should be that art is a hobby that you do in your spare time after you earn enough to afford to sponsor yourself. If you get good enough that you can sustain or you are rich enough that you don’t have to than great but it should not be your only path or you will end up a poor debt slave. This isn’…
No, the article contains rather good advice, and from a range of opinions. My own advice is to follow the authors example: if your actual dream is something with lottery-like odds, find a way to build a career in an adjacent field to which you can apply genuine interest. You might not be able to cross that chasm but your odds of happiness - which matters more - are higher than if you try to divide your days or years…
> No, the article contains rather good advice, and from a range of opinions.
You must have read a different article than I did, because the one I read contains an assortment of exceptionally shit advice like "ignore them because they're going to die eventually" and "just lie" and "it's not like they're going to stop loving you" and "wear them down" and "don't worry about their blessing".
Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#7I hope my child will be able to sincerely evaluate her talent, ambition, and capability to make the right choice. There isn’t anything wrong with perusing art per se, but a vast majority of people just aren’t good enough to make their pursuit of art impactful and beneficial to those around them.
Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#8https://web.archive.org/web/20210709010638/https://www.nytim... Shitty advice for you reading pleasure. Really the advice should be that art is a hobby that you do in your spare time after you earn enough to afford to sponsor yourself. If you get good enough that you can sustain or you are rich enough that you don’t have to than great but it should not be your only path or you will end up a poor debt slave. This isn’…
I second this approach as this is what I did many years ago. The advice I give people now is you have to create your own job these days if they are intent on working as an artist etc but to be aware of all the competition out there (youtubers etc).
Re: Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers
#9This article makes an interesting contrast with another article on hackernews this morning, about the median student debt of Columbia MFA students: https://www.wsj.com/articles/financially-hobbled-for-life-th...
I guess I’m lucky that the subjects I enjoyed at school are fairly lucrative.