Employment or shmemployment? What do freelancers choose in times of crisis?

Today I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot lately: jobs, schmobs, anxiety, expectations, and beliefs.

A couple of months ago it became pretty clear that AI had shaken up the illustration market quite dramatically, and that about 95% of commissions had apparently gone over there. Well, I don’t actually know the exact number. But the last time I was without commissions was in 2018, and I was without them for about four hours. I didn’t even have time to tell anyone before a new job came in.

The rise of AI also happened to coincide with another first: after ten years on Fiverr, my rating dropped from 5 stars to 4.9. Fiverr changed the way they calculate ratings. They used to ask about quality, communication, and something else I can’t remember. Now one of the questions is basically “Do you feel this was overpriced?” And, to be fair, I am rather expensive by Fiverr standards. My score on that metric is consistently around 4.7, and potential clients have pretty much stopped showing up in my inbox.

To be honest, all these years I’ve been perfectly happy not having to look for work. I just accepted whatever landed on my doorstep. Going back twenty years to running all over the internet, dropping links everywhere and saying, “Oh please look at me, I can draw dogs too, just like the previous hundred and forty commenters!” sounds deeply unappealing.

Course enrollment is still happening, but it takes effort. And I think everyone has noticed that enthusiasm for online classes isn’t exactly what it used to be.

So naturally I got a bit sad and started thinking about how exactly I was going to make money again.

And that’s where things got interesting.

First of all, now that commissions have slowed down, I somehow work about three times as much.

I fall asleep thinking about how to reinvent myself, repackage everything, use every opportunity, not miss my chance, and at the same time avoid overworking myself or dying of boredom. In other words, I need to learn how to sell, and ideally learn to love selling as well. Which, by the way, is not impossible. If you get genuinely interested in it, it becomes strangely addictive. I went through a phase like that on Amazon eight or ten years ago. It was tremendous fun. It also consumed about 200% of my life, so eventually I had to stop.

I wake up thinking about the same things. I deliberately leave my phone in the kitchen so I won’t scroll Facebook first thing in the morning, but instead lie there and think while gradually waking up Maika for preschool.

I think while walking. I think in the shower. I fill notebook after notebook with perfectly ordinary ideas about how to redesign everything across all my websites, channels, and platforms so they all point back to me, are user-friendly, solve the problems I actually want solved, and stop solving the ones I don’t. Ideally in two languages and for two different audiences, without making a huge fuss about it.

I keep hoping the obvious ideas will run out and the brilliant ones will start arriving. So far, that has not happened.

Then during working hours, with metaphorical smoke coming out of my ears, I try to implement all these ideas. Unfortunately implementation is much slower than idea generation, and every change immediately creates a hundred more changes that need doing. Progress is happening, but slowly. The summer I planned to dedicate to all this suddenly seems very short. One still has to find time for swimming and having fun.

At the same time, a whole collection of fears and beliefs has suddenly raised its head. I disagree with them completely, but they don’t seem particularly interested in my agreements or disagreements.
1) An artist is some unwashed freeloader living off family and society. Shameful thing to be.
2)Work equals salary. If you aren’t earning money, you aren’t worth anything.
And dozens more in the same vein.

I’ve also been discussing my situation with absolutely everyone: colleagues, neighbors, friends, and my husband.

And this is where I noticed something fascinating.

People split very clearly into two groups.

The first group is my colleagues. They’re genuinely curious about how I’m planning to adapt in this wobbling new world and happily share their own ideas. We compare notes and scratch our heads together.

One friend, an extremely accomplished artist (artist-artist, not a commercial illustrator), told me she feels disconnected from the professional community after a very long maternity leave. She says things are incredibly quiet right now. Her plan is to give herself another year and a half, maybe two years, to develop her work, and if things don’t improve she’ll look for a day job. I can’t remember exactly how she phrased it. A normal job? A regular job?

The second group consists of friends and acquaintances who work as employees. Often in very creative jobs, too.

They immediately, and I mean immediately, start suggesting places where I could get hired.

So far the suggestions have included: a nursing home, home care work, cashier in a supermarket (advice on exactly which websites to search for vacancies following the suggestion), a 25% position teaching art at an art school

I actually applied for that last one. I won’t get it, because I don’t have the required qualifications and my Swedish is not quite ready for delicate young ears.

I explain that all of these jobs sound perfectly fine, and some even genuinely interesting. But they offer very little money for quite a lot of effort.

“I’ll just come home from my shift and collapse,” I tell them. “At this stage of life I know myself reasonably well. Twenty years ago I would have charged through anything, but not now.”

They cheerfully reply, “That’s okay! At least it’s stable!”

I ask how much I would actually earn.

Take the art school job. It’s not bad. But it would take one or two evenings a week, and my own courses are in the evenings. I’m not going to stop running them. So what would they even pay me? Maybe 7,000 kronas a month (about 700 euros)?

“That’s great!” ьн friend says. “That’s almost a whole month’s groceries!”

Not for us, by the way. Our grocery bill is well over 10,000 kronфы, and that’s with me actively hunting discounts.

I told another person about my plans to develop my YouTube channel in order to attract clients. Not for monetization—I understand perfectly well that monetization sounds like a utopian fantasy. I also mentioned the quarter-time teaching position.

“The teaching job sounds more promising,” he said.

More promising!

I understand more stable. I understand better for integration. I even understand the appeal of having a social benefits package, or at least 25% of one.

But what exactly does more promising mean?

Will I be richer in twenty years? More famous? Happier? More fulfilled?

If I choose the lovely art schoolб and it does sound lovely, no argument thereб instead of all these mysterious leads, funnels, websites, and business experiments?

I can’t entirely sort out my own thoughts on the matter.

What I can see very clearly is how sharply people divide in their ideas about my future depending on whether they work for themselves or for someone else.

One important detail: everyone I’ve talked to, myself included, has a strong safety net. We all have partners who earn enough to support a family.

So yes, our quality of life either has dropped or would drop if the second adult stopped earning. But nobody is ending up hungry under a bridge. This is not a life-or-death situation.

I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts.

Of course my sample size is small, and I’d love to add more data points.

But please be honest.

Do you think an artist who isn’t selling should get a “real job,” at least part-time?

And did you actually make it all the way through this stream of consciousness?