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Samia Mounts's avatar

It's wild how often you write essays that perfectly mirror where I'm at with my own creativity. I've had this feeling so often, that the job-ness of it all is really fucking up my ability to approach my art as my art. The need to monetize, the need to make a living - it spays my creativity. I want to write about so much that I'm not writing about. And it's multi-pronged, the way the limiting works. I have managers for my voice acting career that will pick up the phone and call me if I write something they fear will make a corporate client hesitant to hire me. I have a husband I love deeply who is uncomfortable with my voracious appetite for romance and sex, and whose partnership and support are key to my economic stability right now. I'm making a podcast about closeted deviants of every kind - from polyamorists to kinksters to happy sluts to bisexuals to straight guys who are into trans women or fat women or anything that is beneficial when undertaken by consenting adults - and simultaneously auditioning for stability-guaranteeing jobs like singing in a military band. I want to express myself authentically and make some kind of mark on the world that helps people be happier and experience more joy and fuck each other up less. And I need health insurance.

One really has to figure out a set of Jedi mind tricks to work around all of the forces trying to keep our mouths wired shut. How do you silence the knowledge that you need whatever project you're working on to make you money without that knowledge corrupting the project? I'm very interested in how you're managing to do it. For me, it's constantly reminding myself what really matters to me, reinforcing my values, and setting my life up in a way that isn't very difficult to sustain financially. It's not foolproof, it's a constant effort and balancing act, and I always feel like I'm falling short somewhere, usually sacrificing creative out put for financial solvency, or vice versa.

Thank you so much for writing this, Clementine.

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Jendi Reiter's avatar

I need that podcast! How can I be notified when it's ready?

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Samia Mounts's avatar

Hi Jendi! This comment made my morning. :) To get news about Closet Ed., just subscribe to my Substack! I'll be blasting the world with news of the show from the moment we release the trailer and for every episode after that It'll be very soon, we are just getting a few more episodes tightened up before we announce a launch date.

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Ivy Blanche's avatar

feel this so much, your process ... i want to somehow hold your hand for a moment and NOT use words, to describe that connection you create each time you reach out and write. and how much that means to me (and many others)

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