“The trouble is that we have a bad habit of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” - Ursula Le Guin
This is my absolute favourite quote of all time and it comes from esteemed author Ursula Le Guin. I came across this quote in high school whilst studying her text The Left Hand of Darkness (very good book, made better if you don’t have to write an exam on it) and it has stuck with me since.
Welcome back to the RoundUp, A series where I scour the internet for answers to common questions that tend to plague creatives and present my findings here.
Let’s end off this month with a bit of optimistic philosophy shall we? Today’s question is:
What if it all works out?
For those of you who follow SNL, Season 52 premiered recently with new cast members. One of which is Grace Reiter, a 25 year old comedian who started by making comedic sketches on TikTok with friends. After their channel American High became viral on TikTok, Reiter has appeared in Minimum Wage, a web series created by her and her friends, The Chair Company, a comedy-triller on HBO, and is now a member of SNL. Reiter’s first youtube shorts date back only to 2021.
As a first-year cast member on SNL, she’ll be making $3,000 per episode.
The web series Minimum Wage was bought by Netflix and will be premiering in October of this year. That’s another steady paycheck.
In my opinion her best work to date is her youtube video The Hunger Games (but better) - A Parody, which is a (near) shot for shot remake of The Hunger Games created by her and her friends for her birthday, with 14 million views so far, it’s a fan favourite and she’d working on a Twilight (but better) soon.
Another American High shorts alumni is Julia Dicesare. With 416.5K followers and 14.4m likes on Tiktok and 437k subscribers on Youtube, Dicesare’s youtube channel is a mix of her stand up routine, long form comedic series - The Reality of Apartment Hunting, White Women of the West Village and Every Episode of Sex and the City: Fornication and the Metropolitan Area. She is also part of Minimum Wage.
She has video diaries on her page, where she candidly vlogs her days, explaining that she moved to NYC to pursue comedy. It’s a rewarding experience to watch an artist before they ‘make it’, to see that drive and passion that’s so similar to yours, and want to reach out through the screen and tell them that they’ve done it.
What if it all works out?
Sometimes that’s a hard question to ask in the current world. Even from a creative standpoint, the idea of making it big in your industry may seem like such a long and daunting journey that requires items that you just don’t have in your pack.
Nepotism. A high follower count. Time to explore and make mistakes.
The average, has- a-full-time- job to pay the bills - artist is already been wrung out by the day. Then there’s the million other artists in the world ten steps ahead of you with every scroll of your thumb. Comparison is hard to outrun. But that’s not a reason to stop running.
I’ve been writing a book for the past five years. I just completed it at the start of this year (Hold for applause. Thank you) I kept coming back to it on and off absentmindedly. The first few drafts were terrible- that’s not self-depreciation, that’s just statistical- but it was good enough for me to keep writing. In the years of my life being unpredictable, it’s been something steady and growing- a linear progress I could count on while the initial years of adulthood proved anything but an assembly line of predicaments, each trying to one up the last.
I had the fleeting outline of an idea for it lining up to be let in the exam room for a very scary and stress-inducing test on Le Guin’s book. It instantly vanished from my mind when I sat and received lined paper.
When I returned to my locker, two hours later, very hungry and having no faith in my ability to understand the English language, the idea returned and something clicked into place enough for me to mull over it for a couple years, then finally open up a laptop and begin a five year long journey.
What do I have to show for it? What a strange way of thinking of the past five years. I was having fun.
Even if I hadn’t completed the book, it has served me in more ways than one. I know how to keep trying, I know rejection, I know late-night flow states, I know the satisfaction of smashing a word count. I know how to sit with discomfort, irritation, boredom, annoyance, intimidation, giddiness, joy, faith and curiosity.
And I have never had a boring train ride.
I think the reason I like the Le Guin quote is because it sort of says it doesn’t have to all be hard. Trying to get your creative career off the ground is a fun and challenging thing. Don’t let comparison extinguish the giddiness of actually following your dreams. And when you’re so wrapped up in what you could achieve in the next day, month, year, comparison just slowly fades away. Small side comments are met with confused disinterest and little things that you used to play on repeat to ignite your ambition gives way to soft, peaceful clarity.
Dedication beats obsession. Skill trumps talent. It will all work out.
And anyways, you have time.
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Thanks for reading! It’s nice to meet you! Let us know if you like this type of content or if there’s anything else you’d like to hear from us.
You can find the creatives that were mentioned in this article down below, if there’s any topics or people you’d like to see me cover, let me know in the comments. (And if you’d like to be featured, let us know too!).
Thanks again for reading and remember - be kind to yourself!
Catch you later,
Kaye
Make sure to check out the artists mentioned!
Grace Reiter:
Youtube: @GraceReiter
Instagram: @GraceReiter
Tiktok: @reitergrace
Julia DiCesare
Youtube: @julia_disecare
Instagram: @@julia_disecare
https://www.juliadicesare.com/
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Read the latest issue of The Deep Dive: The Algorithm Wants You to be Average
If you enjoyed this article, you might like to explore Steve's latest Deep Dive on why the algorithm keeps pushing creatives towards the average. It's another good reason to stop measuring yourself against metrics and get back to making the work you really want to make.
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