The Department of Nightly Anxieties
What it's like being an introvert and an illustrator
My day job is a bit off the beaten path – I’m an illustrator. It doesn’t exactly pay the bills, so my day job is supplemented by thirty-seven side gigs.
Being an illustrator is hugely misunderstood. Everyone assumes we have the best job in the world, and the easiest. Like, oh wow you get to sit and draw all day?
One, buddy, hand crampage is real.
Two, the ratio of drawing to everything else that comes along with running your own business with absolutely no business acumen, is about 2 to I want to die.
The way to get illustration jobs is to get your work in front of art directors. They’re typically the ones hiring freelance illustrators and designers for assignments.
Day in and day out, these folks are inundated with promotional mailers, emails, tweets, direct messages, @ comments, hashtags – any possible way that an illustrator can get their work in front of an art director’s face without prompting a restraining order.
This very integral part of my perfect drawing job is called “self-promotion.”
I, a mostly introverted person with only short, unpredictable bursts of extroversion, must consistently promote myself to strangers with jobs on the internet.
Frankly, I'm still recovering from a FICA (Female Irish Catholic American)1 upbringing in which the main tenet of my existence was to do everything possible to avoid making people upset with me.
So imagine my predicament when the very people in charge of hiring me for the one job I kind of know how to do are most likely already sick of me.
Needless to say, I haven't emailed art directors in over five years and mostly just do my own projects and make no money from illustration.
But now I've learned how to make comics about it all! Here's a new one:
Another thought
With the uptick of “Christian nationalists” in the US, and it being Pride month, I’m reminded of this quote by Dr. Wayne Dyer that my mom wrote out and kept on the fridge.
“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you.”
This always hit me in the bones, knowing my Christian mother was actively reminding herself of this everyday. She and I did not see eye-to-eye in regards to religion. Living my life according to my own spiritual boundaries and guidelines, I sometimes felt like a black sheep in the family. But I loved this reminder on the fridge—for the both of us.
How lucky I am to have had a parent that held their beliefs, and yet still understood that the most important thing was love and acceptance, regardless of said beliefs being shared. A gentle reminder, whether for a parent-child relationship, a spouse, or just a fellow human, no one owes it to you to be your idea of a perfect version of themself for you. And you don’t owe anyone a different version of you, either.
Happy Pride Month, and thanks, as always, for being here and reading Daydronk.
yes I made up this acronym just now but it tracks
I see a bright future ahead for ‘The (cartoon) Adventures of Ms. Fica’. There is a whole genre of Irish (and English) RC authors out there making a living, writing about how ‘confession’ bought them freedoms lesser mortals could only dream of. You have prompted me to write about how, as a teenager, I briefly loved a Catholic girl called Celine. Sadly, it took me another fifteen years to shake off my Protestant shackles. I love the softness in some of your cartoon faces. Tell stories about being Ms. Fica from your first encounter with a priest and going to confession. How much did your first illicit kiss cost? And how did you escape? There is a whole world of autofiction for you to explore and exploit. 🐰