One summer a few years ago, I was working a really stressful job for an agency for an hourly wage. I had left the full time world, and gone freelance and it was a pretty well paying gig littered with people quitting and yelling. Well as all gigs happen to end after a time, I was let go by the department head. The client had run out of work. It could also be that I was no longer as enthusiastic about the job after a time, and it served into the department head’s decision to let me go. In either case, it was the best thing that happened because I welcomed the opportunity to take a break. As was customary between gigs, I had also started to look for something new right away and realized I had saved a pretty penny. So instead, I decided to just take a break. I just stopped working. I thought to myself it wouldn’t be forever, it would just be for a few weeks, the break lasted for 8 months.
At the time I was so obsessed with learning how to draw and become a better artist, I spent 6 or 7 days out of the week drawing and painting things in order to get better. I thought I was super dedicated, and I was pretty diligent. I had signed up for the Oatley Academy of art’s online course, and was working on a longterm project for the class which is how I filed my time.
Why not just take course for the 8 months and not work for as long as I could? [The look on people’s faces when I told them I was leaving the gig…. when they asked me what I was doing to do, and my answer was “nothing”…]
During the first month. I was on fire. I woke up everyday and would just got straight to the class exercises. When I was not doing the class exercises, I was drawing and painting my life away. It didn’t matter what, super heroes, monsters, people, comic book characters, etc. etc. it didn’t matter.
Months 3 to 5
Months 3 through 5 were just as good. I was deliriously happy with my mini retirement.
My delusion made me wonder why people even worked in the first place. I would go to summer movies when new releases came out, like a retiree. Incidentally there were other people in the theater as well. Perhaps that also quit their jobs and decided to hang out and not work.
Month 6
By month 6 I started to notice a few things that were slowly happening. I wasn’t interacting with people socially. I woke up and talked to my friends online but I wasn’t engaging with people or making connections or talking to anyone in real life. When the time came to talk to people it was a weird mental struggle. I had slowly started to lose the ability to connect with people verbally.
It wasn’t irreparable, but it was something that I noticed.
Months 7 to 8
Because I was not really engaged with other things besides drawing, I was not really drawing inspiration from a wide array of sources. I didn’t go the museum, or other social events. There were no other influence besides me and myself, and maybe the movies that I was seeing every few weeks. For me though it works better if you derive inspiration from a wide range of things. Things that you read and experience, places that you go, people that you talk to and what they* experience. If you don’t, then your range will be limited and so will your inspiration.
I had started to run out of money. Opps there is that. I didn’t really plan for taking time off and had limited funds, so I took no vacations and planned no trips, because that would deplete my funds even faster. I wound up taking a gig eventually (it took me three moths to finally land it).
This might have been shorter if I had built a network of folks to rely on and engage with, via going to social events, drinks, and connecting with folks. Connection.
The point that I am trying to make is, although it seems awesome to sit inside and draw all day (and it was, it really really was) you also benefit greatly from going outside and sharing ideas/engaging with people. Inspiration, mental health and networking are all by- products and good ones. It’s easier to find your next gig, jobs, client personal collaborative projects, etc. if you have a base of people that you can go to. Otherwise your're just rowing a lifeboat in an ocean with no shore in sight. Fun for a time, but tiresome and lonely.
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