Warth’s Big Rusty Lever Metaphor

Warth’s Big Rusty Lever Metaphor

I wrote about this topic several years ago on another blog post that may or may not be out in the internet ether so I thought it might be a great idea to revisit the idea and post about it today. To set the stage, I am up in my garage attic space I call the attic studio or in other terms, the Black Label Society Meeting Room. I call it that because the first whisky I ever drank up here was a Johnny Walker Black Label with a Romeo Y Julieta cigar (don’t judge me, it was what I had). Moreover, as an avid cigar smoker, I don’t smoke in the house. Therefore, the attic studio allows me the opportunity to make art and smoke without making the house smell like an ash tray.

The following post is a metaphor for artists. Artists who spend their days or nights working to make ends meet while still practicing their craft in a professional way. You see, statistics say that most of us these days need a second job to pay the bills while we toil away in our spare hours making art. I know the struggle well—I’ve been doing it for more than three decades from a small midwest town far from any metropolitan area.

In a nutshell, and I plan to elaborate, the big rusty lever is the switch between our careers. Call it Plan A and Plan B or simply the regular job and our creative career. Some of you reading this might be artists like myself, or writers, photographers, sculptors, etc. Basically anyone who makes art while holding down a job to make ends meet. Point being, you have two careers in life and managing the “switch” is a challenge.

It is currently 1am on a Sunday morning. My regular job (Plan B) is scheduled to be Monday through Friday, 3:45pm to 1:00am. I often have weekends to make art without going to work. I spend weekdays working in the house studio or up here in the attic before and after my regular shift to make art. I paint and draw often, and spend some time writing (such as this) or filming YouTube videos about my life as an artist.

The Metaphor

The big rusty lever is about switching roles and the struggle to do so. At times we are artists, then we conform to whatever our job is. I know how hard it is and I understand the struggle of switching back and forth when we have a family, household chores, work demands from the other job, and simply put, finding time when we are too tired to make art.

I call it the big rusty lever because it can be a monumental task and not always easy to move from one role to the other. Think about it like this…You work all day, evening, or night in one capacity and then switch to a new role to work a second job. The one that pays the majority of the bills is often is the priority. For most of us, that is Plan B or the job we do to make ends meet when we want to make a living from our art.

You are not alone. Winston Churchill was not only a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and had the stress of holding a government together during World War Two, but also painted in his free time. Philip Glass was a taxi driver well into his 40s, while his operas were being performed at major venues. William Carlos Williams was a practicing pediatrician while becoming a world renown poet. Donald Ray Pollack worked in a factory for 32 years at a paper mill in Ohio before publishing his first collection of short stories. Gauguin was a banker and a painter! The list is long—trust me, there are countless artist who moved the lever from job to artist often.

When we use a part of our brain for work, and burn energy working outside of art, it becomes increasingly difficult to move the big rusty lever from “employee” to “artist”. If we spend too much time in one area, it could even get stuck and we have to work even harder to move the lever from role to role.

Finding a balance between the roles is crucial and time management becomes a real challenge. If you work as an artist in your free time, you might even discover that other aspects of your life are in peril. Time for family and friends, chores, and even time to relax is often ate up with even more work. The cycle is demanding and this is why so many people give up on their dream to be an artist. I don’t even see it as time management, but more about energy management. I’m often too tired to make art. The mental and physical demands of Plan B make Plan A (the artist plan) just too taxing and easy to put off until another day. But leaving the lever in Plan B position too long makes getting it back to Plan A so much harder.

So what are we to do?

The short answer is we must continue to make our art! Yes, you may paint 900 paintings and sell just one, die and not be known in your lifetime. But someday, like Van Gogh, your work becomes so important it becomes such an impact on the world that you didn’t know possible. Ultimately we want to realize the fruits of our labor—I know. I don’t want you to think I romanticize the idea we have to die before we are important. Because I don’t believe that. But if we don’t persist, we cannot leave the legacy of our art and vision nor will we ever succeed as an artist.

Without moving the lever, you are killing your art, and may never know what might have been. So, move the lever often, keep making your art, and be the artist you were meant to be. As the fictional character Yoda said, “there is no try, do or do not”. Move the lever often, keep it lubricated, find solitude to make your art, and be the artist you are.

Find a schedule that works for you. Plan your time and be flexible in your free time so that you don’t burn out (easier said than done). Most of us work to make ends meet, have quality healthcare, provide a retirement, etc. However, none of that matters if we are not living for what we are passionate about. I’m not talking about a hobby either, some of you reading this may interpret the rusty lever lever as work vs past time. But, a lot of you really want to live your life as an artist (Plan A—What you really want to make your career).

I chose the metaphor of a big rusty lever because it is hard to move from side to side. The lever is big because it is not something we find as easy as a light switch. I know how hard it is to move the lever when you are exhausted. And I know your muse doesn’t just turn on and off. Professionals show up and do the work even when they don’t feel like it—this is the struggle and what separates us from hobbyists. Don’t let the lever get stuck on Plan B if Plan A is your desire. And as we know, you are not any less professional of an artist if you have a job to make ends meet. It just means you are managing your life as you see fit.

If your art is Plan A, the goal is to manage the movement of this lever until you can leave it in the artist’s position and make ends meet as an artist. I wish you all the best at success and I for one want you to know I feel the struggle as you do. Moving that big rusty lever is hard and the energy required to keep doing it can be overwhelming. Keep making art, move the lever until art becomes the only position you leave the lever in—even if you have to retire from Plan B before you can do it. After all, most of us will retire by age 67 with some sort of passive income. If you’re like me, you plan to make art until the end. Don’t wait until retirement to be the artist you want to be—you can have a successful career doing Plan A and B until retirement. It’s all gravy after that. And if you succeed beforehand, you’ll be glad you didn’t wait and glad you moved the lever often.

Go make your art, the world needs you.