I hate “A Day in the life of an artist” videos

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There is a video every YouTuber makes at least once in their career and that is a “Day in the life of…” and I’ve seen loads of them. Mostly because I was curious how they structure their day while working from home.

The majority of them live alone or with their parents and what they show is mostly what they do on a busy day when they have clients. Needless to say, this does not fly with me. Hence, I live with my narcissistic codependent mother who has no regard or respect for my privacy, and yet I’m the one paying the bills. And on top of that, I’m a single mother of a teenager, who needs my attention when she comes back from school and on top of that, I still have a full-time job in the afternoons.

Therefore, I work at night. Cause nobody distracts me from working or orders me around to do stuff that are not necessary.

But going back to this “so-called realistic day in the life of”.

This is bull shit. When you’re starting you can’t plan your day of how you’re going to do what and when. You do most of the things that you know how to do every single day, from morning till dawn and at the end hope your art gets noticed and you make sales. Or you get likes and views.

Yes, if you have a schedule, it’s easier because you know exactly what to do each day, you have orders to fulfill, and deadlines to go by. But what if you don’t have either of that, and you just started. What if you don’t have a big project you need to work on and you don’t know how to make one up?

Then you draw, illustrate, design whatever you think people might like to see and recommend to others. Which takes time because you don’t know all the shortcuts and your work is slower than the pros.

You spend the entire day working on a pattern design, and pattern bundle that you feel extremely proud of. Make mockups of it and post it online, promote the living hell out of it just to realize no one is looking at it, nor buying it. Then the feeling of I just wasted all this time for nothing creeps in because you are used to seeing these successful artists online who paint the picture of how easy it is. How you can easily make sales. How you can promote your products on SM and YT and get followers and make sales right away. Not if you don’t already have followers or friends and family members who support you and buy your art first so you can get noticed by the algorithms.

But if you’re on your own, it doesn’t work like that at least not for free. You need to advertise, so people see your shit. The fastest way is paid advertising and even that is not guaranteed. If you don’t use some sort of paid advertising, you’re looking at, at least, one year up to three of working for nothing. Only to start seeing results when you almost decide to quit.

But that is not all, they all tend to eat healthily and exercise. Really? Everyday? Or just on the day, you decided to film that vlog? I can guarantee that because some days I’m so busy I forget to eat, let alone exercise. My only exercise is lifting my but from the desk and going to the toilet or to make myself a coffee. If I didn’t have a full-time job or a kid or pets, I probably wouldn’t leave the desk all day.

And people say to use a planner, a schedule. Bae, I have two planners and a bigger one on the wall, they are well organized, color-coordinated, and well written, the problem is I can’t follow it because of outside constant distractions, that do not understand the meaning of “Working from Home”. And you wish you could put your foot down, but never argue with a narcissist, you won’t win. Never!

The bottom line is, I envy them. For having the chance to work freely, keeping organized, being supported by the people around them. Having the right support behind you makes a huge difference. I’m not saying it’s not possible to make it. It just takes longer and you need to put in more effort, mental and emotional strength.

If you feel the same, put a “Hell yeah!” in the comments.