This Hyphenated Life

My man surprised me today with an unexpected delivery via what used to just be called mail, but is now referred to as "snail mail."  I picked the package up from the front porch, weighing it and, not recognizing the return address, tearing off the outer envelope.  Inside were two little boxes containing my new, groundbreaking business cards, heavy stock and gorgeous, featuring my name and contact info, a flaming typewriter, and the lone potent word like a bold decree at the bottom: "WRITER." This was a first.

I have been working varied jobs since the age of 16, scooper of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, graveyard shift postal work at the Kansas Main Post Office, bookseller, fille au pair, science guinea pig, editor, gardener, dog walker, floral designer, free-lanceer at numerous newspapers and magazines, caterer, antiques vender, and of course, waitress, waitress, waitress. Anyone in an artistic pursuit will be familiar with this duality

: always chasing the paying jobs, while still trying to leave some time and energy for "one's art," be it dancing, acting, painting, clowning, acting, sculpting, etc. Income has a way of trumping creative endeavors every time,  so it is a constant juggling act to try and reserve enough bandwidth and passion to manage both.

I call this my hyphenated life. My business card might say "Floral Designer," but there is always the unspoken hyphen, the silent second half of the title, as in Floral designer/Writer, Personal Assistant/Writer, Waitress/Writer. But this silent second half of the equation will forever stir up a terrible moment of doubt in the one who fishes this card out of purse or pocket and hands it to the stranger who has asked "what do you do?"  The trepidation boils down to this: which one is the career, the serious life-long pursuit,  and which one the hobby?

I enjoy seeing commonalities between myself and others of my species, and have noticed that one of the first questions we ask one another when meeting for the first time is invariably: What do you do?  This may be a springboard for other topics, an icebreaker,  but in many ways, is may also be a stand-in for the real question, "Who are you?"

Many of my artist friends also have two sets of business cards. The one that says "realtor" or "contractor," and then the one they made years ago on a whim that never manages to make it into their wallet, the one that says their name and under it, their passion, be it carver, acrobat, sword swallower, or novelist. So does this mean the business card represents less of who you actually are, and instead speaks more to how you pay your rent? Or does it mean that artists have a hard time taking their art seriously enough to let it be the full-time job? Of course the ideal is that one's art is actually also one's source of income, and we all continue to hope that SOMEDAY this will be the case. But shoulder-to-shoulder with this dream, there is also the slightly deluded, romantic notion in my tribe that one should never "sell out," with that subtle disdain for the overly practical. There is a long tradition upholding the conviction that seeing to food, clothing, and shelter is in fact  the antithesis to excelling creatively.  We want the security, and at the same time, we resent the time it takes away from that other, equally, if not more, important part of ourselves.

I wish I had a big, frayed top hat filled with the best business cards I have seen over the years, for many of them belonged to artists. There was the stand up comedian whose card portrayed him as a hard-up Depression-era figure, wearing a barrel and suspenders, and beneath it the phrase: "No reason to live but doing it anyway." Or the casting director whose card was simply a depiction of a large red couch with her phone number on it. Or perhaps the most straightforward of all, the musician whose card showed a piano with the words "Wage Slave" spelled out on the keys. These are clever ways of edging closer to giving that silent second job top billing. So today, for me, was a landmark of sorts, as the cards in that box said only the one word: Writer, straight no chaser, no disclaimer, no qualifiers. A thrilling hear-me-roar moment of commitment.