Ignore Everybody - MacLeod, Hugh [18]
“Well,” said Tim, “if you have the creative bug, it isn’t ever going to go away. I’d just get used to the idea of dealing with it.”
It was damn good advice. It still is.
32. Remain frugal.
The less you can live on, the more chance your idea will succeed. This is true even after you’ve “made it.”
IN 1997, I LANDED THE DREAM JOB. HIGH-PAID advertising copywriter. Big office. Big apartment in New York. Glamorous parties and glamorous backdrop. All feeding the urban sophisticate narrative, etc. All good.
The trouble was, even though I was being paid very well, I was still broke by the end of the month. Life in New York was expensive, and I was determined to experience it fully. I sure as hell wasn’t saving anything.
Like they say, education is expensive. And I ended up paying top dollar.
Because of course, one day the recession hit, the job dried up, and I nearly found myself on the street. Had I lived a bit more modestly I would have been able to weather the storm better.
There are a lot of people out there who, like me back in New York, make a lot of money, but spend it just as quickly. The older you get, the less you envy them. Sure, they get to go to the fancy restaurants five days a week, but they pay heavily for the privilege. They can’t afford to tell their bosses to go take a hike. They can’t afford to not panic when business slows down for a month or two.
Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.
33. Allow your work to age with you.
You become older faster than you think.
Be ready for it when it happens.
I HAVE A FRIEND. CALL HIM DAN.
When I first met Dan, he was a twenty-nine-year-old aspiring filmmaker, living in a one-bedroom apartment down on New York’s Lower East Side, who liked to spend too much time in bars.
The last time I saw him, he was a forty-one-year-old aspiring filmmaker, living in a one-bedroom apartment down on New York’s Lower East Side, who likes to spend too much time in bars.
There’s a famous old quip: “A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”
It’s not just guys in business who fall into this trap, unfortunately. It happens just as often to people taking a less conventional path. It’s sad enough when you see it happen to a friend of yours. When it happens to you, it’s even worse.
The good news is, it’s easy enough to avoid. Especially with experience. Suddenly you realize that you’re just not into the same things you once were. You used to be into staying up all night, going to parties, and now you’d rather stay in and read a book. Sure, it sounds boring, but hey, sometimes “boring” can be a lot of fun. Especially if it’s on your own terms.
Just go with the flow and don’t worry about it. Especially don’t worry about the people who are worrying about it. They’ll just slow you down.
34. Being Poor Sucks.
The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.
EVERYONE WILL HAVE HAD A GROUP OF FRIENDS who went hitchhiking around Europe when they were nineteen, living off ten dollars a day. And they were so happy! And they had so much fun! And money wasn’t an issue!
Ha. That was Youth, that was not Reality. Reality is much bigger than Youth. And not as nice.
That’s not to say cash is the be-all and end-all. But to deny the importance of the material world around you (and its hard currencies) is to detach yourself from reality. And the world will punish you hard, eventually, for that.
I’ve often been asked by young people, which do I think is a better career choice: “Creativity” or “Money”? I say both are the wrong answer. The best thing to be in this world is an effective human