You Wanna be on Top?
Being a first-generation student comes with the challenge of navigating systems where many of your peers arrive with access, knowledge, and support you can only imagine. Neither of my parents attended college, and growing up with my mom, who moved between periods of unemployment, work as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), and had fast-food jobs, I became aware of what we lacked. What began as embarrassment eventually hardened into shame. The older I became, the more conscious I was of our financial reality, and the more I felt compelled to prove that I could build a different life for myself.
In addition to being a first-generation student, I was pursuing creative degrees. The disparities I observed became even more pronounced because my cohorts were small. Many of my peers seemed to possess an ease and confidence that came from knowing there was support waiting if things did not work out. Pursuing music felt different for me. It felt like a gamble. If I failed, there was no obvious backup plan, no family blueprint to follow. Even my first flute teacher cautioned me against pursuing music professionally, not because of my abilities, but because of the financial risks attached.
Looking back, I realize I was not only choosing a field of study. I was choosing a relationship with risk, security, and the kind of life I believed was worth pursuing.
When I ask myself why I pursued creative degrees, the answer feels both simple and complicated. I wanted an artful life. I wanted to believe that passion and joy could be enough, that I could build a meaningful future doing something I loved rather than following a path that felt expected or prescribed.
Yet, looking back, I recognize another motivation: I had something to prove.
For much of my life, I carried an awareness of how others might perceive me. Whether real or imagined, I felt the weight of assumptions. So, success became about more than fulfillment. It became evidence. Evidence that I was capable, intelligent, disciplined, and deserving of the opportunities I received.
Though I understood the financial risks, I did not pursue the arts to make money. In fact, I expected quite the opposite. What I continue to question is why the enjoyment of musicking was not enough on its own. Why did I feel compelled to turn it into a profession, an identity, and a life? Perhaps part of the answer is that I wasn’t only pursuing music. I was pursuing validation, security, and proof that I could create a future different from the one I inherited.
At the same time, I was surrounded by warnings. From teachers to friends’ family members, I regularly heard that the sacrifices required of creative careers outweighed their rewards. The message was often less about talent than sustainability. People spoke of financial instability, burnout, and the burden of having to create rather than creating because inspiration called. What once began as a source of joy could, under the pressures of survival, become something else entirely.
The Freedom of Sustainability
I hesitate to generalize about all undergraduates, but I do wonder whether many of us, especially those who received little guidance while making life-defining decisions, carry romanticized assumptions about our chosen fields. Looking back, my undergraduate years were largely defined by passion. I was a young person immersed in music, learning, growing, and imagining possibilities. Yet as graduation approached, reality entered the picture. I began to understand that loving something and building a sustainable life around it were not necessarily the same thing.
It was during this period that I discovered Arts Administration. Rather than viewing it as a departure from music, I came to see it as a bridge between my artistic values and economic sustainability. The work allowed me to remain connected to the arts while building the stability I knew I would need.
As someone who still considers himself a musician first, I find myself asking: Is Arts Administration my day job? And if so, are day jobs failures of creative ambition, or are they often the foundation that makes creative work possible?
In his writing, Herbert Lui argues for the latter. His perspective challenges an embedded belief that only full-time creative work constitutes success. For creatives, and particularly those who carry shame, insecurity, or a need to prove themselves, our egos can reinforce the idea that work outside our artistic practice somehow diminishes our legitimacy. Yet sustainability offers something many creatives desperately need: freedom.
Not freedom from work, but freedom from constant survival.
Money may not buy happiness, but it does provide security, options, and the ability to make choices with greater intention. Through my analysis of the Pittsburgh Arts Council’s 2024 Artist Survey and my own lived experience, one conclusion feels undeniable: creatives need foundational support before they can fully thrive. As wealth inequality continues to grow, that foundation becomes increasingly difficult to secure.
Programs such as Creative Rebuild NY offer evidence. By providing 2,400 creatives with $1,000 per month for 18 months, participants were able to pay down debt, save money, and make choices that better aligned with their lives and creative goals. Many reported spending less time surviving and more time creating. For parents, caregivers, and those living with chronic illness, the relief was transformative.
This is why the day job can be thought of as a modern patron. Lui highlights Lawrence Yeo’s words that day jobs can fund “that precious minority of your day where you can work on your craft without the anxiety of money worries.” The day job becomes less an obstacle to creativity and more the structure that protects it.
Perhaps this is where many of us get stuck. In a culture obsessed with immediacy, we often overlook the power of incremental progress. We want creative fulfillment now. We want artistic recognition now. Yet sustainable creative lives are often built gradually, through consistency, patience, and choices that preserve our ability to continue creating over the long term.
Viewed through that lens, the distinction between hobbyist and professional artist becomes less important than whether one’s creative life is sustainable.
When I think about my own family, many of their most significant accomplishments did not arrive until their later years. Their journeys remind me that life is not a race toward a singular definition of success. It is also about cultivating patience, celebrating what we have already achieved, and remembering that while creativity may be deeply important, it is not the only thing that gives a life meaning.
Redefining Success
Accepting that creativity requires sustainability forces us to confront another assumption: that business and artistry exist in opposition to one another.
For much of my life, I carried some version of that belief. Like many creatives, I absorbed the idea that artistic integrity and commercial success occupied opposite ends of a spectrum. The closer one moved toward money, marketing, or audience-building, the further one drifted from authenticity.
Success could begin to resemble “selling out.”
Yet the older I become, the more complicated that assumption feels.
Many creatives, including myself, want our work to matter. We want it to reach people, spark conversations, build connections, and perhaps even leave a lasting impact. Yet we can be uncomfortable with the systems, structures, and compromises that often accompany broader visibility. These tensions are not rooted in selfishness. More often, they emerge from a genuine desire to protect the integrity of the work. But every path comes with tradeoffs.
This is why I appreciate artist fnnch’s question: “Can [your art] not perhaps give you more joy remaining a hobby?” The question is less about discouraging professional artistic practice and more about challenging our assumptions regarding success. Does making money from our creativity inherently make the work more meaningful? Does professional status automatically make us more fulfilled?
At the same time, I have come to believe that “selling out” can be an overly simplistic catch-all for a much more nuanced reality. If creative work is to endure, then understanding how it is supported, financially, professionally, and structurally, becomes just as important as the work itself. For those acting with intention and care, engaging with markets, audiences, and business models may not represent a betrayal of artistic values. It may simply be another form of creative practice.
In this sense, what fnnch describes as “Aesthetic Research” resonates. The process is not solely about generating income. It is about experimentation, curiosity, and discovering how one’s creative voice can connect with others.
In “How to Make a Living as an Artist,” fnnch outlines three interconnected principles: owning that you are a businessperson, finding your style, and cultivating a brand through repetition. Underneath each principle lies the same lesson: creative success is rarely the product of inspiration alone. It requires experimentation, resilience, and a willingness to learn from what works, what fails, and what evolves over time.
Own It, You’re a Businessperson
One of the more difficult realizations to accept is that pursuing creative work often means becoming more than just a creative. For me, that metamorphosis took place studying to be an Arts Administrator, prompting the belief that this line of work is crucial for creatives to understand. Whether we like it or not, creatives are solopreneurs. We write the emails, manage the budgets, track the expenses, negotiate opportunities, market ourselves, and advocate for our work. The romantic image of the artist rarely includes administrative labor, yet much of creative sustainability depends upon it.
It’s easy to view these responsibilities as separate from the creative process because they fall behind the scenes. Then they become obstacles standing between yourself and the work you actually want to do. Yet, these tasks are not distractions from the art; they are often what make the art possible.
Thinking of oneself as a business can feel uncomfortable, particularly for creatives who worry that business-minded thinking diminishes artistic integrity. Yet most businesses are simply systems designed to sustain themselves. At their core, they are structures that generate enough resources to continue operating. The same principle applies to creative practice. The goal is not to become a corporation; it is to build a model that allows you to continue creating.
Of course, no single model works for everyone. What sustains one creative may not sustain another. Some rely on teaching, others commissions, grants, performances, consulting, licensing, or entirely unrelated employment. The challenge is not finding the perfect formula but discovering the combination that aligns with your values, goals, and circumstances.
This requires experimentation. It requires accepting that some ideas will fail, some opportunities will disappoint, and some risks will not pay off. Privilege undeniably shapes who can take those risks and how much failure they can absorb. Yet, there is also a danger in allowing fear to become the deciding factor. If we never apply, pitch, perform, propose, or ask, we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn what’s possible.
In many ways, building a sustainable creative life resembles any creative process. We try things. We make mistakes. We adjust. We try again. The goal is not perfection. It is developing the knowledge, resilience, and self-awareness to make better decisions the next time around.
What’s Your Style?
If the goal is to earn a living from creativity, then at some point we must confront a simple reality: creative work does not exist in isolation. Whether through audiences, customers, funders, presenters, or grant panels, professional creative practice depends upon other people finding value in what we create.
Of course, demand is not a neutral force. Access to resources, economic inequality, cultural biases, and systemic barriers all influence what receives attention and support. Even grant funding, often positioned as an alternative to the marketplace, requires artists to satisfy specific criteria and priorities. In an ideal world, meaningful support would be readily accessible to everyone. In reality, our systems frequently struggle to support those who need it most.
Artist fnnch acknowledges this tension while offering a practical perspective:
“If you are pursuing art as a hobby and creating work for personal enjoyment, absolutely you should create whatever moves you... But if you want to be a professional artist, repeatedly creating work that people do not want is lunacy.”
What resonates with me is that I do not interpret this as an argument for pandering to audiences. Rather, I see it as an invitation to experiment.
As a musician, I am reminded of my own flute practice. There are moments when I catch myself repeating the same difficult passage over and over, somehow believing that repetition alone will magically solve the problem. Yet improvement rarely comes from doing the exact same thing. It comes from changing something: the rhythm, the articulation, the fingering, the airflow, or my approach entirely. Whenever I notice myself trapped in that cycle, I often write a simple reminder in my practice journal: “Don’t engage in insanity, André.”
Creative work can function similarly. If a particular idea, format, or approach is not connecting with others, the answer is not necessarily to abandon it. Sometimes the invitation is to explore, adapt, and experiment. The goal is not to discover what audiences want at the expense of what excites you. The goal is to discover the intersection between what feels meaningful to create and what resonates with others.
Not every experiment will succeed. Many will fail. Yet those experiences provide valuable information about what works, what doesn’t, and what possibilities remain unexplored. Avoiding risk altogether guarantees something far worse than failure: the loss of opportunities to connect with the people who might genuinely appreciate what you have to offer.
Perhaps that is why one of fnnch’s most important observations concerns the relationship between art and ego:
“Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you.”
For creatives, this distinction can be difficult to maintain. Rejection often feels personal. Criticism can feel like a judgment of our worth. Yet if experimentation is part of the process, then we must create enough distance between ourselves and our work to learn from feedback without allowing it to define us. Someone disliking our art does not mean they dislike us. It simply means we have learned something new about the conversation taking place between creator, artwork, and audience.
A Repetitious Brand
fnnch writes:
“If I am passionate about something, and it falls flat, then I find myself less passionate. But if I am passionate about something, and it connects with people, then I find myself excited to develop it further. Your work connecting with people is a reward unto itself, and that reward is motivating.”
This idea helps us rethink branding. Many creatives hear the word “brand” and immediately think of marketing, self-promotion, or commercialization. Yet at its core, a brand is often something much simpler: a pattern of recognizable choices that people come to associate with you.
Those patterns emerge through repetition.
As a musician, I notice this in improvisation. Every improviser has certain tendencies, phrases, and gestures they return to. Over time, these habits become recognizable parts of their artistic voice. For me, one example is chromatic passing tones. They find their way into my playing again and again. I doubt that alone they will become “The André,” but it shows how artistic identities are often built, not through a single breakthrough moment, but through repeated experimentation that gradually reveals what feels authentic and distinctive.
Once audiences begin responding to those patterns, a new challenge emerges: How do you continue evolving without losing the qualities that drew people to your work in the first place?
This is where the concept of the “Adjacent Familiar” becomes useful. People generally enjoy novelty, but only to a point. We are often most receptive to ideas that feel simultaneously familiar and surprising. Not entirely new, not entirely predictable, but somewhere in between. The creative challenge becomes introducing variation while maintaining enough continuity for people to recognize the thread connecting the work.
While moments of pure novelty occasionally capture widespread attention, they are often exceptions. We see it in viral internet success stories or in established artists who have accumulated enough credibility and financial security to take significant creative risks. For most creatives, however, sustainable growth tends to occur through gradual evolution rather than dramatic reinvention.
This process closely resembles what fnnch calls “Art as Aesthetic Research,” using a particular style, image, or creative constraint as a foundation for exploration. Rather than viewing constraints as limitations, they become invitations to investigate what new possibilities exist within them.
In many ways, some of the most compelling creative work emerges from this kind of resourcefulness. Whether in craft traditions, musical field recordings, or other forms of everyday artistry, creators often discover remarkable depth by working within defined parameters rather than constantly abandoning them.
The goal then is not to discard what is working whenever the urge to experiment arises. It is to use existing successes as a launching point for further discovery. A brand is not something to be trapped within. It is a platform from which new creative possibilities can emerge.
Sustainability alone does not solve every dilemma. Even when we achieve stability, questions remain about the systems that provide it and the compromises they may require.
For those of us who come from strategically undervalued communities or non-dominant cultures, liberation is rarely straightforward. We are often forced to navigate contradictions. You earn the degree that once felt impossible, only to develop complicated feelings about those who never had the same opportunity. You promise yourself your creative work will remain intentional, yet find yourself participating in systems that may conflict with your values. We are constantly making choices, and every choice carries consequences.
This tension returns me to a question that has surfaced in my work: Do we reject tainted resources, or do we attempt to repurpose them for good?
I do not believe there is a universal answer. What I do believe is that we cannot allow ourselves to become immobilized by the complexity. The world is not binary. Few choices are entirely pure. If anything, those who benefit most from unjust systems would prefer us to remain overwhelmed, exhausted, and unable to act. Reflection matters, but so does movement.
As fnnch reminds us, experimentation requires accepting uncertainty. Some choices will work. Others will not. One person may pursue the arts professionally only to discover greater joy treating it as a hobby. Another may spend years nurturing a creative practice on evenings and weekends before eventually making the leap into full-time work. Neither path is inherently more valid than the other.
Though I still occasionally desire some of the access and security that seemed available to many of my peers, I am grateful for the choices I have made. Music taught me discipline, curiosity, and joy. Arts administration taught me how to advocate for others seeking those same experiences.
For years, I believed I had to choose between survival and creativity, and that success meant proving that I could make it as an creative. Now I understand that the two can sustain one another, and that success means building a life that allows me to keep creating.
Life is rarely balanced. Sometimes my musicianship takes the back seat. Sometimes my day job becomes the patron of my artistic practice. What matters is that I continue making room for both.
I have spent much of my life trying to prove something, to others, to circumstances, and perhaps most of all to myself. That I was capable. That I belonged. That my future could be different from the one many expected for me.
Yet through every setback, disappointment, reinvention, and uncertainty, one thing has continued to grow: my ability to trust myself.
And so I keep going, knowing that even when the path is unclear, I will find a way forward.
After all, I always have.
