3) How do you want to pursue your art? I think this is where the whole what makes you happy thing comes in. And with respect to God, I think he gives us desires and passions for a reason. To say that God just wants us to be happy is really kinda silly, or at least simplistic. There are always going to be trials and tribulations and our happiness is often transient and dependent on the littlest things. Joy is as much about attitude as it is about our circumstances. But while there will always be periods of suffering in the Christian life, there's a difference between hard times that build character and strengthen our faith and misery that exists as a result of not fulfilling our passions and desires. So we can't just say, "I'm unhappy about my job/school/whatever, I need quit it and find a new job/school/whatever." We need to look first to our attitudes, to whether we're really trying to be joyful people, if we're seeing how we're blessed, and then to see if this is just a trial, a chance to persevere because seasons of difficulty come no matter how great the job/school/whatever is. And if you eliminate those two, very common, possibilities, then I think you can say, ok, I need to consider what job/school/whatever will make me the happiest. And you can do that, knowing you're not brining the misery right along with you.
So do you really want to teach art? Or is teaching art just a more realistic stand-in for being a professional artist, and you don't want because it would take away from the art by making it into this thing that pays the rent and puts food on the table. But how much does teaching art allow you to just pursue art? If you spend all day teaching art does that make it easier or harder to come home and make the time in the evening to sketch or paint your projects? If an opportunity came up to make some money selling art, which job would give you the flexibility to spend more time on the project for a short period of time? Are you going to be inspired by your student's work, by their creative young minds uninhibited by presuppositions? Will working in art every day keep it at the top of your thoughts, force you to continually study great artists, to attend museums and gallery openings to find material for you classes and inspiration for yourself? Or will you be too stressed out about their discipline problems and that fact that Susie almost broke the pottery wheel and Andy wants to throw paint at Jane and half the class is never going to master two-point perspective no matter how well you demonstrate it, that all you want each day is to come home and not think about your art at all? Do you need to spend most of your working time on things that are art-related, or is it better to spend a large portion of time on something that doesn't demand as much of your creativity and emotional energy so you can pour all of that into the hours you carve out for your art?
I think that's how you have to think about what you want. Cause you know what you want. You want to be financially secure, you want to have kids in a few years, you want to pursue art. And God probably wants you to have all those things. And you know that while those things, absent everything else (like your relationship with God) won't magically make you happy, they'll certainly contribute to happiness. But what you don't know is how. So you break it down and you get nitty gritty with the financial stuff and you think hard about how you want to pursue the art and how your job will affect that and then you make a decision.
Wow this got really, really long, like exceeds the length restriction so I'm posting it as two parts long! My fingers actually hurt. Hope it helps!
So do you really want to teach art? Or is teaching art just a more realistic stand-in for being a professional artist, and you don't want because it would take away from the art by making it into this thing that pays the rent and puts food on the table. But how much does teaching art allow you to just pursue art? If you spend all day teaching art does that make it easier or harder to come home and make the time in the evening to sketch or paint your projects? If an opportunity came up to make some money selling art, which job would give you the flexibility to spend more time on the project for a short period of time? Are you going to be inspired by your student's work, by their creative young minds uninhibited by presuppositions? Will working in art every day keep it at the top of your thoughts, force you to continually study great artists, to attend museums and gallery openings to find material for you classes and inspiration for yourself? Or will you be too stressed out about their discipline problems and that fact that Susie almost broke the pottery wheel and Andy wants to throw paint at Jane and half the class is never going to master two-point perspective no matter how well you demonstrate it, that all you want each day is to come home and not think about your art at all? Do you need to spend most of your working time on things that are art-related, or is it better to spend a large portion of time on something that doesn't demand as much of your creativity and emotional energy so you can pour all of that into the hours you carve out for your art?
I think that's how you have to think about what you want. Cause you know what you want. You want to be financially secure, you want to have kids in a few years, you want to pursue art. And God probably wants you to have all those things. And you know that while those things, absent everything else (like your relationship with God) won't magically make you happy, they'll certainly contribute to happiness. But what you don't know is how. So you break it down and you get nitty gritty with the financial stuff and you think hard about how you want to pursue the art and how your job will affect that and then you make a decision.
Wow this got really, really long, like exceeds the length restriction so I'm posting it as two parts long! My fingers actually hurt. Hope it helps!
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