Occasionally I get taken to task because I'm a creative person and I'm actually concerned about the business end of my art — for example — and the business end of being a writer.
Some people even go to the trouble of telling me that I'm "selling out" because I'm concerned with getting paid for my work.
I suppose what I find ironic about that is that if I turn the tables on them and ask doctors why they're not healing people for free or ask accountants why they are not doing people's taxes for them for free I get met with all kinds of huffy attitudes!
Which leaves me contemplating that age-old question of why anybody who is in a creative field somehow shouldn't be treated as equally important when it comes to being compensated for their work?
I mean the primary reason I expect to get paid for my artwork is that... well... art supplies cost money, and just like anybody else out there I have bills that need to be paid and I have to buy food.
As we say around here "everybody's gotta eat!"
I suppose the thing that puzzles me a little bit about it is how we arrived at this space in which creativity allegedly has less value?
Is it simply that Art and Writing has a less tangible way of passing along "value?"
But it's not just creativity. Mrs. Denmarkguy works as a therapist and sees lots and lots of clients, quite a few of whom balk little bit at the fact that she not only charges for her sessions but because she is really good at what she does her sessions are not exactly cheap.
You get what you pay for!
Quite a while back we went through the whole discussion of what services are worth, as we realigned her fee schedule to actually reflect market price rather than wishful thinking.
And so, much like a creative, does a doctor of the mind not have the same right to earn a living as a doctor of the body? Does a broken mind have less value than a broken bone? Or somebody who makes a living from something that is not as creative?
A very long time ago, back when I still lived in Texas, I did a lot of freelance work doing original art for advertising and helping people put together corporate newsletters. One of the particularly insidious practices in the advertising and marketing business was the clients who expected potential service providers to submit an example "on spec."
Of course, what would often end up happening was that the client — or potential client, as it were — would take the information and proposal you provided on spec and use it and declare that "they didn't actually need your services."
It didn't take me long to reach a point in which I refused all spec work, even for very large clients that could potentially make me fairly wealthy. I'm not here to be taken advantage of as a source of free information!
Now you might ask "but what about Hive?"
Well this is completely different in the sense that I'm writing here on an entirely voluntary basis, I'm not being employed by Hive and this is not a job. This is simply blogging, from my own enjoyment. The fact that I may or may not earn some rewards is simply a bonus that makes this community more attractive than a number of other communities where (in fact) I still do submit blogs.
In the end, however, the saying "we all have to eat" continues to hold true. And I don't think it is particularly fair to expect people in creative fields to somehow forego fair compensation just because they don't have a doctorate or something similar for lawyers or engineers.
But that's just my opinion! Your mileage may vary!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 2024-06-05 01:00 PDT
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