Luck in its various forms

A while back, a bit of luck blew my way, literally.  It fled someone else and came to me. I would have returned it, if only I knew who it belonged to.

Once upon a time, so long ago that by the time you see this post I will most likely have forgotten about this, I was walking through a parking lot. A breeze was blowing gently when it wafted something leaf-coloured in my direction. I didn't think anything of it initially, as there were quite a few leaves blowing about the ground.

But this one was square-ish.

I recognised a $20 note. Immediately I trapped it with my foot. Looking about, I scanned the parking lot to see if there was any lost soul chasing after their truant money.

This happens sometimes. You go into the shops, buy something for cash, get change, shove it in your pocket and head out to the car. Once there, you pull your car keys out of your pocket, along with everything else, sending receipts, tissues and spare cash flying.

But the parking lot was barren of life. No person chasing flying notes, nobody standing by a car, ignorant of the money fallen out of their pocket. No one.

I had a good, solid look about. Surely someone would miss this $20. It needed to go back to its owner.

Alas, they were long gone. Nobody was about.

So I gave the note a new home in my wallet, climbed into my car and left on my errand. I had to go pick up something, then return to this parking lot for something else.

Fifteen minutes, I had returned. As I walked through the parking lot, something yellow fluttered along the ground. Square-ish.

I trapped it and rescued a $50 note from under my shoe. Fifty dollars.  Further along, another $20 note came skittering along and I rescued that as well.

I looked about. Surely there was someone who was losing money. Someone? Anyone?

For a parking lot full of cars, it sure was devoid of human life.

So there I was with $90, and no way of finding the original owner.

While I am happy to be a few dollars richer (for it did buy some needful medicine for one of the family), my heart aches for the poor soul who had lost it.

My weekly budget (a metaphor)

I envision the time I have each week as money. I earn $168 per week. Unlike real money, however, I cannot save any surplus for the next week, nor can I borrow on credit. I can only use what I'm given and hope I budget wisely.

So, my budget is thus:

Taxes (at a preferred rate of 30% of my income): $56 
This is the amount of time I choose for sleep. This also includes any pre-bed rituals, like brushing teeth and maybe reading. Unlike real life, I can borrow from the taxes I pay to fund something else, but I end up regretting it. (Okay, maybe that is more like real life than I want to admit.)

Tithing: $12 
Being religious, I believe in giving over a certain percentage of my income to my God. I have a three-hour church block on the Sabbath. I teach Early Morning Seminary five days a week, plus lesson prep time, an hour on Monday for Family Home Evening, and time  here and there for my own scripture study, meditation, prayer and ministering service. Turns out I devote about twelve hours. If this was a true tithing analogue, I should up it to about seventeen hours a week.

Bills:  $36
Gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues. These are time obligations I must fulfill:
Day Job:  $12
School:   $12
Writing:  $12
I try to balance these out. Sometimes school takes up more time, especially if I have a project due; sometimes work takes up more time if they ask me to come in more hours to help complete a project. Sometimes the Day Job feels heavier than it is, because it takes up more spoons than it should. Don't get me wrong; my day job is a perfectly good job. I work in a good environment with a great team. If IT Support is what I wanted to spent the majority of my budget on, it's one of the better jobs out there. But I don't want to do IT Support any more. My issues with dealing with other people's problems are growing. This increases my tax demand, as I burn too much energy on the Day Job.

Travel: $10
This is literal. While I put petrol in the car, I also put time into driving places. On a quiet week, not so much. If I have an occasional dash to Perth or somewhere, that can take a bit more out of my budget.

Child Support & School Fees:  $16
When one has offspring, one must care for them. Your kids need your time, more so when they're younger, but not as little as you'd think when they're older. Help with homework and practice, listening to them, spending time with them, and more are required. While much of my child support budget is spent on individual children, at least there are a few things that I can group together.

Food:  $14
One must nourish the body. One must also nourish the soul. Self-care is essential for good mental health, which then enables one to pay one's other bills.  Things like dedicated meal times, reading time,  piano practice, a nice, hot shower, exercise and other personal-care things are a bill one cannot neglect to pay.

Spousal support:  $10
Gotta support the spouse, or one finds one no longer has a spouse. While some activities (like watching a movie together) can be covered under the Food bill, other things like just listening to how their day was or helping them pull weeds in the garden is purely spousal support. Many people neglect this bill, sadly.

Chores:  $7
As much as I loathe it, chores still need to be done. Dishes, kitty litter, laundry, vacuuming, you name it. One has to keep one's environment tidy. One of these fine days I'll earn enough spendable money to afford to pay someone else to clean my house for me. (Buy my books and make this dream of mine come true.)

Now, at the end of all this, turns out I have approximately $7 left. That appears to be one hour a day. Alas, this one hour a day gets nickle-and-dimed away in the interstitial moments.  Stop to chat with someone at work after a shift, that could be a good fifty cents gone. Waiting at the train station for the daughters after school? Another twenty-five cents spent. Little by little, these few precious dollars evaporate. A minor mishap leads to the Chores bill demanding another dollar. A late child nibbles away twenty cents. Traffic slowdown takes another twenty cents. Another child needs to go shopping to buy something for school? That can take two whole dollars.

Before you know it, those seven dollars are gone, and you're wondering where the money went.

Then there are those weeks where some big event takes over your life, forcing you to borrow from or even abandon some of these bills.  My last week was like that.  A child had a massive homework project she couldn't do alone. An expected death of an uncle gave me a few hours' pause while I gave over to grieving. A planned weekend away, while welcome, meant that many hours I could have spent on other projects went somewhere else.

As you know, Bob, I completely did not blog this week, as my time needed to be focused on other things.  I'm hoping you'll forgive me for this, for I was prepping the final copies for the print version of God of the Dark and getting Bride of the Dark prepped up as well.

And then there were the times I didn't want to do anything at all, but trawl through my cousins' memories of their awesome father.  The thing with an expected death from Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer is that one has plenty of time to come to terms with one's graduation from mortality. Also  helps to be Mormon with the belief that death is not the end, merely a pause.

Now, if only there was a way I could earn more money in a week.

Patronage, or "How the Author Gets to Eat"

Antonio Verrio had the patronage of William III.

Until very recently in human history the Artists (aka painters and playwrights and composers, etc) were supported by Patrons (aka the King, the Lord, the Rich Men, the Bishops of the Church, etc). In exchange for the basic necessities of  life, artists painted or wrote or composed whatever their patron wished.

Down side: they didn't get much choice in what they had to produce. He who has the gold makes the rules.

Up side: at least they were doing their art, and there was time to work on their own projects, if permitted.

The 20th Century changed much of how humanity functions socially. Patronage, in the old sense, has all but disappeared. However, nothing will ever change the fact that an artist needs to eat.

Where does the means for food & shelter come from? The modern-day equivalent of the patron.

Artists need patrons to support them. In the beginning of the career art isn't financially self-sufficient, so the money to feed and house the artist/writer has to come from somewhere, whether that be a Day Job, a supportive spouse, investment funds or even grants. These are our modern-day patrons.

Until the art/writing can bring in enough money, patronage is how an artist eats.

Patronage isn't free money (unless you're a trust fund baby). You've got to give something back to the patron in exchange for their support. In the old days (oh, 200-plus years ago) patrons supported artists, writers, composers, etc in exchange for them painting/writing/composing what the patron wanted them to. There are many a great composer who wrote brilliant music, but not necessarily the music they wanted to write. They were at the whim of their patron. They patron wants a series of chamber music sonatas? The patron gets a series of chamber music sonatas, even if the composer has dreams of composing a symphony.

Now, many an artist has what they call the Day Job. This is a job that is most likely not related to their field of art. The novelist is an accountant by day. The artist works as a secretary. The actor turns to waitressing. 

Others may have something more akin to the traditional patronage pattern in the form of a Supportive Spouse. Your engineering husband doesn't mind you staying home with the kids and your novels. Your actuary wife is okay with you working on your music all day, as long as the house is clean when she gets home.  Some people might dream of a Sugar Daddy, thinking that all he would do is throw money at you to do whatever you want. Unless you're the spoiled, pampered princess descendant of a rich, indulgent father, ain't no way you getting any money from anyone without them expecting anything in return. (What does the Sugar Daddy want from you?)

Then there's the grant model.  Modern Patrons of the Arts do provide scholarships and grants to allow an artist to pursue the project they want. However, grants often require projects to fit certain criteria. If your pitched project doesn't fit what the grantor is looking to support, you might not get funding.

Crowdfunding fits in under the grant model of funding. You pitch your idea and whoever's fancy it tickles will toss money your way.  Does your idea have enough merit to attract funding?

Currently, I am using a combination of a part-time Day Job and Supportive Spouse to enable me to have enough writing time. As the children get older, the necessity of my staying home during those crossroad  moments isn't as necessary. As soon as the kids old enough to not need their mommy, I will no longer have a reason not to seek out full-time employment.

However, I don't want to go back to a day job. I want to proceed to that fourth, most glorious, free-est category of artist there is: Self-Funded Artist.

This is the mode we all dream about. Imagine, not having to be dependent on a modern-day patron for your day-to-day needs! Wake up in the morning without the stress or grief of having to put aside your artistic desires so you can go fix someone else's computer, answer someone else's phones, give someone else fries with that.

There are two modes of Self-Funded Artist: Financially Independent and Income Generating.  

A Financially Independent artist has a source of passive income, usually from investments, patents, trust fund, etc that provides a steady flow of spendable, regardless of what they do. If they wished to sit around all day and write the word "Wibble" ten thousand times, they could.

An Income Generating artist is one whose artistic work has enough value to bring in enough income to live on. Full-time authors with a decent backlist. Steadily-employed actors. Essentially, this is the Day Job in your chosen field of art. Lucky is the artist who can unlock this achievement.

My ultimate goal is to become a Financially Independent artist whose capital arose mostly from earnings from my Income Generating art. Not only will this free me from the Day Job but will also free Supportive Spouse from his so he can pursue his own projects.

After all, he has dreams too.

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Help Her Grace achieve her dreams; buy her books, review them honestly and tell your friends to buy her books as well. If you don't buy her books, buy someone else's or give patronage to an artist.