The Decidedly (Un)Glamorous Reality Of Sticking At What You Love
Ambition requires sacrifice, says Gary Vaynerchuk. So, leave your bling at the door
A relatively recent article in The Guardian (kind of summed up by its title: “A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it”), did its bit to blow the lid on an entire industry — but also an idealised view on life we all might be guilty of having.
That view is that achieving our dreams is somehow egalitarian in its nature — available to all; that all you need is talent and passion and fate will take care of the rest.
(Or, for literal interpreters of The Secret, just close your eyes and imagine it’s true and somehow a magical Universe will conspire to make it so.)
This author’s inconvenient truth, when it comes to the literary business, however, is that this idea simply isn’t true.
Quite simply, you need financial backing if you want to be a writer, says Lynn Steger.
That means at a very basic level, you need to be able to pay the rent, pay the bills and buy food while you are penning the next classic work of literature.
You then might have to pay out a more-than-modest sum to publicise the damn thing, if you want anyone outside of your family to know it actually exists.
Home Truths
Very few people can do this, Steger notes.
And the ones who can are either already well-established, well-taken care of financially, or have a partner/family member who can pick up the slack while they take X amount of months off work to allow themselves the sufficient time and space to be creative.
As she writes:
“There is the perpetuation of an illusion that makes an unsustainable life choice appear sustainable.”
What she means is that it’s actually very hard to make a living as a writer.
And the wider truth is this: that a lot of people we might look up to, that appear to have “made it”, that we aspire to be like, might very well fall into that category.
They might very well have had a helping hand of some kind along the way — or, they simply didn’t need one.
This isn’t sour grapes (well, maybe slightly — but there’s still a point to be made here). This is the reality of the publishing game.
It is also the reality of most other games.
It’s our lack of appreciation for this fact that gives us a severely distorted idea of what it actually takes to be successful, if we are not already in a privileged or well-positioned… er, position of some kind.
The truth is, if you are a Regular Joe and you don’t have a network of backers, you’re not already well-known and you’re not sitting on a pile of cash (or married to someone who is), it can be very difficult to “follow your passion”.
And yes, there are exceptions to the rule here.
But for the most part — for the rest of us —this is the way it is, which means we need a different strategy.
And that’s to swallow our prides — and give up a whole lot of stuff.
(Not) Having Your Cake & Eating Eat
Life gets pretty hard if you expect to fulfill your ambition but you also want to have all the bells and whistles life has to offer at the same time. And these are not all money-related (but most are).
Try financing a mortgage, driving a nice car, paying for twice-yearly holidays, going to fancy restaurants and decking yourself out in fashionable attire, whilst also building a new business or exploring a discipline that is new to you.
At best, your pet project will remain a minor side-hustle or just a nice hobby (which is fine if that’s all you want).
If we want a different life, however, a lot of these things have to go.
Ambition requires sacrifice, as one well-known entrepreneur will tell you.
The Secret Ingredient
As Gary Vaynerchuk explains in the videos below, in order to give ourselves a chance of succeeding at what actually makes us happy, we need to drastically cut back on things that only appear to.
And this is where we can hit a wall.
It might be the social stigma of not driving a certain car, not wearing luxury branded shoes, not being able to maintain the same kind of social life as our friends.
Or it could be the shame that comes from our new pared down, scaled back life, particularly if we have done something as dramatic (and socially unacceptable) as move back in with our parents, something Vaynerchuk is actually a big proponent of.
But, as he argues, not only is there no shame in sacrificing any of these things (i.e. our material possessions or social status), if we want to really make it — it might actually be our only real chance of succeeding if we are really serious about seeing our dreams through to the very end. If what we actually want is something a bit more than dabbling on the side.
So, in the absence of backers, a pre-existing pot of cash to fall back on, or someone who can heavily subsidize us while we chase our dreams, at some point we have to decide.
Are we willing to “slum it” in order to “make it”?
When it comes down to it, what really matters to us the most? Only then will we know for sure if our dreams are actually more than just pipe-dreams.
