When your Joy 🎉 becomes your Job 💼

I have a little share here about a pivotal moment in my career.  

I’m young, around 20, and in my first year of art school.  It’s a beautiful building, it’s 7.30pm and we are still in our studio trying desperately to get our work done to meet our scary deadline the following morning.  Chocolate has to be found to sustain us so off a couple of us troop to the nearest shop to do the honours.  

On our return to said beautiful building, there is an evening-art class exhibition opening.     30 or so people proudly showed the works they had made to their friends and family, who were there admiring the art on the walls.  There were glasses of wine and families were openly celebrating the artists whose works were on the wall.   

It was beautiful to witness.

As we made our way through the event, I had the following thought:  I was at art school so that my joy (the joy of the people whose work was on the walls) could become my job for life.  If I studied hard, tried my best and worked like a dog, there was a chance that my joy, my art could become my full-time life.  

I cried - and not through happiness.

This was the moment that I knew I was going to be flogging my art for the rent, for business, for a career.

I was there to spend three years of my life, learning how to turn my joy into a job.

A pivotal moment, and one that my mind regularly returns to.

So now, how to sum up this experience in one paragraph?  I can’t.  Art school was hard, being so far away from my family and hometown was hard.  I was led by the work and am thankful for that.  I finished my course, and via some elongated, regularly paid work-hiatuses, my joy did become my job.

I consciously work hard to remember that my job needs me to remember that my joy is the key to making work that I love, and thankfully, so do my clients.

Much love

Sam x

I’d love to hear your thoughts, email me here on info@samanthabarnes.co.uk