I woke up in physical pain this morning. Both legs, as usual. The aching is always nearly unbearable. That’s how my morning began, and then it just got worse. Maybe it was only the aching legs, maybe it’s depression, or maybe a combination of both, but I pushed through and started my day anyway.

After catching up on my email, I soon fell into a state of overwhelm. It’s the future stresses me out. And this morning was pretty bad.

I’ve been working with the Dept. of Rehabilitation to get assistance with getting through school and eventually finding work. My soon-to-be counselor there asked me what I envision for a job, so I’m thinking about this a lot. She also asked if I have looked around for jobs that align with my work ideas and plans. This was just to see if these kinds of jobs even exist out there.

I decided to test it out and look around on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Flexjobs. I tried various filters for remote, part-time art jobs with written communications at non-profits, any call for mentors within disability services, and whatnot. While there were a few things out there, it wasn’t much, and not anything perfect, of course. I don’t even really care about how much pay I’d get either. I was just thinking about what I really want to do and what I think I’d be good at.

Many of the jobs, especially the part-time and remote ones, are contract jobs. Being an independent contractor isn’t bad or anything, especially if it’s a company that’s connecting you to clients. If a company is set up to receive payments, find your clients, and does all the promotion, that seems like the way to go, right? Most of those types of jobs mention that you’d keep the “lion’s share” of the hourly payments from the clients. It states nothing percentage-specific, though.

It started making me think more about how I’d like to mentor young artists. I mean, that’s what I’d really like to do, especially artists with disabilities. They don’t have to be young; maybe just starting out. I wondered how I might set up something like that myself. That’s when I started feeling extremely defeated. Do you know how many artists, curators, art writers, and even therapists are trying to run a business just like this? Not specifically for artists with disabilities, but I wonder how big that demographic really is. The specialty factor could be a benefit, but I don’t know for sure.

The company Artlifting, which I’ve been getting onboarded for, offers small workshops and classes to their artists. The company’s driving force is artists with disabilities, and it’s an incredible system that places these artists’ artwork into businesses (mostly corporate organizations). I feel profoundly fortunate to be working with them, as I’ve mentioned before. I would love to expand the work I do with them into the realm of mentoring, teaching, holding workshops, etc. However, the people who lead these classes are extremely successful.

I went to one of their classes where the artist, Charlie French, who has DSRD (Down Syndrome Regression Disorder), had over 130K followers on Instagram and Facebook. His mother, manager, and caregiver led the class and talked about everything from his time management, marketing, and goal setting to how he approaches his paintings and the types of posts he makes on Instagram. His art business clearly runs like a fine-tuned machine and shows a professionally impressive narrative, so I can see why he has such a huge audience and sells his work all over the planet. Also, because he has a lot of help, he gets to spend most of his time in the studio just creating and cranking out the work. He obviously has a lot to give back to the community.

Well, I don’t have such a business, nor do I have the same type of working life. I certainly don’t even have a fraction of the number of followers he has. Promoting myself as an arts mentor or a coach, or someone that someone else would feel drawn to and resemble, feels like a joke in comparison.

The type of art I do has also spread across multiple integrations, from mixed-media, painting, and bookmaking to research-based projects and installation. Additionally, I have numerous series just in painting. They run the gamut of abstract, figurative, collage, landscapes, and portraits. Some people might not like that my foot dips into so many pools. Or perhaps it looks like I’m indecisive. I don’t really know. I’m not very objective on that one.

Is 37 years of lived experience as a career artist equal to an enormous following, a master’s degree, or being an expert coach and public speaker?

UK-based Ceri Hand is a “certified” coach (not sure what certification that entails), curator, dealer, public speaker, and more. She also uses the same network interface that Paddy Johnson’s Netvvrk uses (Mighty Networks). The most basic plan for that is like $80 a month, though I’m not saying I would need such a thing. I may be able to build something like it myself in the simplest form. As a member of Netvvrk, I find it very useful, and it’s a great way to organize everything Paddy has to offer. Since it’s networking-based, it’s a great way to allow members to help each other.

Paddy began as an arts writer. She had a very entertaining art blog many years ago. I followed her for years. Her blog was operating in the late 1990s/early 2000s when not many of us were blogging. It was a treat to find her and connect her blog to mine (on my list of favorite blogs I followed). I started my blog around 1997, but I stopped for a couple of years (in the mid-2000s) before coming back regularly around 2007. I’ve kept it alive ever since.

It’s funny how this very long blog post started with me feeling down and defeated, but writing long blog posts, like journaling, helps me get through it. It sorts out my feelings, and all that. I need to stop and say, if you’re still reading this…thanks!

I’ll end here soon. But I guess I got super overwhelmed thinking about my educational path, like even if I work for years to get a bachelor’s in Sociology, I wonder how that’s actually going to help me in the job market in a profession I have the desire for. It’s a lot to think about because it’s such a long road, and it’s already so late in my life. And I wonder if I actually need to get a degree to call myself a coach or a mentor. I know I have a lot to give. I have a deep passion to help. It makes me happy to see other artists, especially younger and beginner artists, succeed. But is that enough? I really don’t know.

I ask myself, is what I have to give right now good enough? And if so, how would I market it all, make myself known, compete with other coaches and mentors, or create the draw I’d need? How many more ads on Instagram can there be for such services? There are already so many. I know, from being an artist, that working for yourself is more than a full-time job; the promotion alone is full-time in and of itself. I’d need a lot of help (like other employees). And if I only want to work part-time as my body and mind can bear, is it all worth it? I have to make a lot of decisions, or I need a coach to guide me through this journey. And I hate the word “journey!” But I used it anyway. Oh well.