“What would it take for you to do this for real?”

Issue 4: The habit of art

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question my friend, Kat, asked me a few months ago. We were at a group dinner celebrating her birthday and our friend Vicki’s book launch (you can buy a copy here!) This group of four girly pops each has her own niche of creative ambition and appetite, a multi-talented group across many different disciplines (design! editing! sewing!) As we were discussing our varying goals and interests, the birthday girl posed this question to the table: “What would it take for you to do this for real?”

I’ve continued to ponder the question, not just because it’s the one always at the top of my mind, but also because I’ve changed my relationship to this question of art, of making money vs. making creative work over the years. I’ve lived through different phases in my habit of art.

I guess right now, my answer is this. Making art “full time” or only during the mornings or evenings or weekends is not the main barometer of what makes creative work “real.” To do something for real requires a certain threshold of commitment, a level of rigor and discipline to be sure. But if I’m working a full time day job that is separate from my creative work and output to support myself and my commitment to not living an uncomfortable life, does that make the work any less real?

There are obvious material constraints on time, energy, and brain power when you work a full time job, and of course, the spirit of my friend’s question was not to imply that part time makes the work any less real. But I bring it up because the simplicity of this delineation, this neat compartmentalization, has been the default of how I process the world too, how most people do, and most certainly how I have quantified “realness” in the past. If you’re doing creative work and that’s the only thing you’re doing, the way you spend your time is living, breathing, swimming in it, that signals a level of dedication to your creative pursuit. But I’m now trying to push beyond the all or nothing thinking when it comes to the pillars of my life. Meaning making can happen not just in the context of a day job, or career, or what you do to pay the bills.

Back in 2018, during my inaugural millennial quarter life crisis, I quit my full time job to make art “for real.” It was way harder than I expected it to be. It was the first time in my life where I had no structure, no blueprint, no external standards of achievement to measure my self worth against. I wrote personal OKRs to ensure I was maximizing my time off (can you tell I’m a product manager) and to ensure that ART WAS BEING MADE. Because that’s exactly how the creative process works. For those who’ve never had to go through the horrendous and vile process of corporate goal setting, please save me. OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Result. Objectives are supposed to be ambitious goals, intentionally hard to achieve within the defined time frame. They need to be broad enough to encompass large swaths of work, but also should be specific enough to be measurable in Key Results – which are often metrics, but need to be quantifiable and evaluable.

My personal objective for my independent art girlie era was: “Become an artist.” lol.

I asked myself, what do I think “real artists” do? They produce work consistently, they work diligently on their craft, and they get paid for their work.

So I wrote my key results following that:

1. Produce a body of work – at least 10 pieces of “finished” work
2. Finish one drawing fundamentals curriculum (a class or a book)
3. Display my artistic work in some forum (a show, etc.)
4. Stretch goal: Get one commission or paid for one art

In those six months I spent pursuing my art full time, I reached all my key results. I built up a body of artwork by committing to the 100 Day Project (okay so I only did 70 days of this but a win is a win), I took illustration lessons and worked on my drawing fundamentals with r/drawabox, I was lucky enough to be invited to do a group show with three amazing artists I admire (Amy, Alice, Helen). I even achieved my stretch goal, and got to collaborate with a talented writer on a piece for The New Yorker, that I somehow was paid money to do.

But then I went back to working full time. The financial pressure of needing to support myself pushed me back into the comfort of a tech job. I told myself it would just be for a couple years, to save up enough runway to be able to do art “for real” again, and this next time I planned to take at least a year to dedicate myself wholly to creative work.

lol (again).

Now in 2025, I’m creating again, but with a 9-5. For too long, I was afraid to accept that my relationship to my art had to change. I clung like a barnacle onto old ideas of how my relationship to creativity was supposed to look, what type of output I expected myself to have, using systems that had worked for me in the past. But as I’ve learned in my acting classes, the worst thing you can do is hold onto ideas. It limits spontaneity, serendipity, and above all, honesty, which I’ve come to learn is a necessity for me in my creative work.

Currently, I am creating in the margins of my days. I have no personal OKRs. I am not trying to make money from my art. I’ve brokered a tenuous peace with my money work and my creative work for the time being. I know that will change, and I am okay with it. I do have writing goals for the year, but they are all focused on the process, not the outcome. Writing and creating in my life makes me feel worthy, but even more than that, it is how I get back to myself. It’s how I learn who I am, how I process what’s important to me, how I come to like the person I am becoming.

Last week, I did a small reading for an excerpt of a short story I’ve been working on. It’s about not being able to do the thing you love anymore and who do you become as a person if you can no longer do the very thing that defines you?

The theme of the reading was Unfinished Works, and I was so brave and referred back to my writing goals where past katie had said she wanted to do a reading. As my friends like to remind me, someday is not a day of the week.

My acting classes once again came into practice by helping me have a better command of the rhythm and tenor of my voice. It’s funny how I actually started acting to inform my writing, but they’ve actually ended up helping and benefitting me in ways I couldn’t possibly imagine….. and that’s on living in the circumstances, baby! I was surprised at how different of an experience it was to do a reading from performing scenes and monologues, even though I had pieces of paper to serve as an intermediary between me and the audience. It was so much scarier and vulnerable to be reading my own words, rather than embodying a character. In acting, we learned a very versatile tool of doing things to take some of the attention off of you. But when you’re reading, the act of reading is literally the only thing you’re doing.

Anyways, I blacked out. But apparently it was fine. Thank you to my Brooklyn girls Sabrina, Sophie and Yolanda for coming to support me at my secret reading. It’s a good reminder to let people be there for you (yuck, please don’t perceive me), but also on the power of external commitments to force you to actually write and revise (also yuck).

Is doing something the same as being something? Maybe that’s not the right question. How can I continue to practice the habit of art, balancing discipline and rigor with play and having fun?

Creativity is a muscle, and you have to exercise it over time. Like with physical exercise, your body adapts to the pressure you’re putting it under. So you have to change up workout routines, you have to progressively overload, and that is all part of the process.

Every day that I show up, that I sit down at the page to write, to make marks, I remind myself: I’m doing it. For real.

👉🏽🥺👈🏽,

The Real Slim katie