Why I didn't make my art hobby my job

🌱 Middle school

During middle school, a silly and drooling little kid was introduced into both art and Python programming, without knowing that she’d come to love them both instantly — like love at first sight.

That kid was me haha; art was something I was introduced at by a friend in my classroom, which later on became my hobby. Then one morning, while getting ready for school with my mother, an ad would pop on her phone about Python programming classes for juniors that wanted to try out real coding. At that time, being in third year of Middle school (aka one step before Highschool), computer science was already on my mind as a potential major. Therefore, those Python classes were a very nice opportunity to see if I actually liked that field.

I did my first class and oh boy, I was euphoric. The teacher was great, the class fun and the topic very interesting, resulting in me continuing with the classes. I knew now that I wanted to pursue this field.

🍎 Highschool

The computer science mindset had carried over to highschool, while my art skills had started to develop a lot. I never really questioned my decision over my future career, until I happened to find myself in a conversation with an old friend and classmate who pursued an art major.

“How come you are not interested in the art direction? You’d have great leverage with what you already can do.” she said.

Although I insisted on computer science, her idea stayed in my head. What if, what if and what if. I started talking with my family about it while making a bit of research about that direction, since I knew nothing about it.

🧃 After consideration, I stayed on computer science. Here’s why.

1. Art was my hobby. It was a way to wind down and spend my time doing something else than studying. If I were to make it my job, that would strip away the ‘wind down’ + ‘relaxing’ part, and I felt that while doing commissions.

   • Doing commissions is fine, don’t get me wrong; however I noticed that I haven’t had drawn for myself in months since that energy was going to commissioned pieces. Getting to draw for myself again felt like a breath of fresh air because commissions offer the opportunity of pausing them. An actual job can’t be ‘paused’, and that would make my hobby feel like a chore.

2. Being realistic now, a computer science job would just provide a better salary than most art jobs.

3. On a personal level, I don’t find myself fitting with the average ‘art major’ community. We don’t share same opinions about the world, let’s say — and that’s okay.

With that being said, I’m now starting my third year in computer science university which I find veeery enjoyable; on top of that, I got to keep doing art on my free time :>

💌 End of article. Thank you for reading! 💌