Crisis of Faith
My thoughts on going back to school aren't just due to creative frustration, but the idea I'm not sure how 'useful' I feel as a tattooist. I'm not sure how receptive my reading audience is to this idea, considering how entrenched they are in this medium; many of you out there are tattooed, tattooers, or good friends/family of tattooers, but I sometimes think getting a tattoo is a pretty selfish thing to do, especially given the money many spend to get them. I often feel it just as selfish to hope or think I deserve to make any kind of decent living doing it and so far I haven't, which I sometimes think must be the world's way of telling me I should be doing something else. It also sickens me when I hear of anyone charging over $150 or $200 an hour for doing this work, economics aside. I know everyone wants to make a good living and would like to think what they do is useful or important, but how can one gain and maintain anywhere close to an objective perspective on this? How useful is it... really? I know it makes people feel good, but is that enough? And even more pressing to me right now is, do I perform this service so well I should continue at this point? Further, am I a better tattooist than I would be anything else?
It's funny. As I write this I'm thinking back to the days I wished I was a tattooist. I've come so far from who I was then. I definitely feel tattooing suits me far more than customer service, but even saying that feels like a joke. How effectual is any customer service representative ever allowed to be and how much good does even the best cell phone customer service rep do? That job was not service, but degrading, to me and the people I 'helped'. In customer service, I was a minuscule cog in a big damned machine. I feel like anything would have been better. Tattooing seems so much more than I had before. I may still be that same minuscule cog, but I feel like my presence is at least a more personal and kind one. The machine I'm part of is much smaller, more honest and kind-hearted, and I think I do far more good in it, but is that good enough? I wonder if it's a delusion to think I could do more for the world or even one person than I do now. I wonder if even having these thoughts is selfish or at least motivated by ego and self worth.
None of the above is to say I don't enjoy the act of tattooing from a design's conception to its execution, from the drafting table and light board to the person and their skin, or that I don't think it would be nice to even make a modest living at it. As a digression, I have yet to do the numbers, but I'd be surprised if I made more than $12,000 in 2009; another joke in this town's economy, where the average income for a citizen is $75,000 and average tattooist's wage is $32,000.
These last two years have been worse than my second year in the field.
I know not all of this is new to some of you. I know I have ranted a bit about how badly I'm doing, as if it's anyone's fault but my own and some of you have even heard similar thoughts to those I opened with.
What's new is that I felt a sort of stabbing reinforcement of all that doubt today. A friend of mine withdrew a large piece I was going to do for them; canceled everything, as in they may never get the piece. We've put considerable work into this piece's design. When I asked what was up, they told me their job had become damaging to their mental health and they effectively decided they needed to get their shit together, stop spending money on so much "useless shit" and get a new job, one that would probably not pay as much as the one they now have.
"Useless shit"... they didn't mean it that way, they say, but this could not help but call to mind my above thoughts.
I'm sick of feeling superfluous, extraneous. I'm sick of feeling like I'm apparently not even worth my friends' time and money. I'm sick of friends or the idea of friendship being involved in my business, because of the complications those things bring with it. I've begun to feel a little burned. I don't have a solution for any of this yet and that feels even worse than the situation I found myself in today.
I want to know what the fuck I'm doing. This kind of confusion is getting to be too much. I'm to the point where part of me thinks I should look for new work, something fulfilling that's not even 'artistic', and only tattoo friends by appointment if a shop would still even have me in that capacity (not that it's much different from my 'professional' life as it stands).
It's funny. As I write this I'm thinking back to the days I wished I was a tattooist. I've come so far from who I was then. I definitely feel tattooing suits me far more than customer service, but even saying that feels like a joke. How effectual is any customer service representative ever allowed to be and how much good does even the best cell phone customer service rep do? That job was not service, but degrading, to me and the people I 'helped'. In customer service, I was a minuscule cog in a big damned machine. I feel like anything would have been better. Tattooing seems so much more than I had before. I may still be that same minuscule cog, but I feel like my presence is at least a more personal and kind one. The machine I'm part of is much smaller, more honest and kind-hearted, and I think I do far more good in it, but is that good enough? I wonder if it's a delusion to think I could do more for the world or even one person than I do now. I wonder if even having these thoughts is selfish or at least motivated by ego and self worth.
None of the above is to say I don't enjoy the act of tattooing from a design's conception to its execution, from the drafting table and light board to the person and their skin, or that I don't think it would be nice to even make a modest living at it. As a digression, I have yet to do the numbers, but I'd be surprised if I made more than $12,000 in 2009; another joke in this town's economy, where the average income for a citizen is $75,000 and average tattooist's wage is $32,000.
These last two years have been worse than my second year in the field.
I know not all of this is new to some of you. I know I have ranted a bit about how badly I'm doing, as if it's anyone's fault but my own and some of you have even heard similar thoughts to those I opened with.
What's new is that I felt a sort of stabbing reinforcement of all that doubt today. A friend of mine withdrew a large piece I was going to do for them; canceled everything, as in they may never get the piece. We've put considerable work into this piece's design. When I asked what was up, they told me their job had become damaging to their mental health and they effectively decided they needed to get their shit together, stop spending money on so much "useless shit" and get a new job, one that would probably not pay as much as the one they now have.
"Useless shit"... they didn't mean it that way, they say, but this could not help but call to mind my above thoughts.
I'm sick of feeling superfluous, extraneous. I'm sick of feeling like I'm apparently not even worth my friends' time and money. I'm sick of friends or the idea of friendship being involved in my business, because of the complications those things bring with it. I've begun to feel a little burned. I don't have a solution for any of this yet and that feels even worse than the situation I found myself in today.
I want to know what the fuck I'm doing. This kind of confusion is getting to be too much. I'm to the point where part of me thinks I should look for new work, something fulfilling that's not even 'artistic', and only tattoo friends by appointment if a shop would still even have me in that capacity (not that it's much different from my 'professional' life as it stands).