The Economy Is Fucked. You Might as Well Chase Your Dreams.

I recently got laid off from my architecture job because of budget cuts, and, to be honest, I gave my blood, sweat and tears to land that position. Five years of studying, two internships, volunteering, and hundreds of applications that led to hundreds of rejections. I should also admit that I applied to the same studio twice before finally landing the position. After the initial shock and a little reflection, I had a wave of realisation: the economy is fucked, so I might as well not give up on my dreams. That's not to say architecture isn't my dream. It is. But it isn't all I'm dreaming of, either.

We're all fed the same story, aren't we? Study, get your degree, get a good job, a house, a car and a husband. Congrats, you did it! Well, it doesn't feel like a win, does it?

How many people do we know who hold three degrees but can't get a job in the service industry? 

How many applications are left unanswered, and how many CVs are tailored again and again to make us look like ideal candidates?

To start with my side of the story, architecture is not an easy degree. I think the internet agrees on that. Long hours, tight deadlines and an endless, invisible debt of materials, on top of the very real debt of housing and university fees. I can admit that I was privileged enough to attend a free public university in my hometown, so my only expenses were materials and sleep. It was all good until it wasn't.

During university, I mostly escaped into fashion design to cope with my academic stress, a skill that had helped me get into university in the first place. By the time I graduated, I could say I was also a fashion designer, just without the title. This came with the bittersweet realisation that I could never really work in fashion. Not only because my hometown didn't offer me that opportunity, but also because being a creative comes with a package deal of enormous financial uncertainty and a handful of unpaid internships.

So I pursued architecture, a career I loved and had worked incredibly hard for, while fashion remained another dream I wasn't quite sure how to make room for.

Let's not fool ourselves: building a career in a creative field is hard. Like, super hard. The industry is full of unpaid internships, long working hours and art professors who never seem to be satisfied. This also comes with constant judgement, even from fellow creatives, because in such a competitive industry, everyone is a critic, including yourself.

But really, what's so different about the creative industry compared with any other industry nowadays? Honestly, nothing, I think.

Maybe a few years ago things were different, but there isn't much in the current job market that guarantees anything. Even the job-seeking process seems more exhausting than ever, and once it's over, there aren't necessarily that many things to enjoy. Schedules that don't accommodate our biology, managers who don't seem to manage, and colleagues who yap after work about how much they hate working. Because one must imagine Sisyphus happy. At the end of the day, you really have to ask yourself: who am I doing this for?

So many creatives are present on social media, yet we're still told that being a painter, a photographer or a fashion designer isn't a real job. We're advised to take our future seriously or, even more terrifyingly, to get a real job. What even is a real job, one could ask? The rent is real, but most salaries can't seem to cover it. So is your real job really real if it can't cover your real rent?

If the real can't guarantee your reality, is it even real?

And that's what I keep coming back to. We're encouraged to choose the sensible career, the respectable degree, the job with the steady salary, because apparently that's where security lives. But what happens when you do everything you're supposed to do and the security still disappears? In this long existential episode, because yes, this is still written by someone who recently got laid off, I keep thinking about who we were before the world told us who to be. Cliché, of course. Honestly, just look at the title; we've already got two clichés.

Didn't we all once imagine ourselves doing something different? Something we genuinely loved, before the pressure to be practical convinced us that those dreams were better left as hobbies? Bills need to be paid, of course. But in a constantly changing world, where even supposedly safe careers don't guarantee financial stability, why are we so quick to abandon the things that make us feel like ourselves?

Why are we trying to fit into boxes that were specifically made not to fit anything? Why do dried-up paintbrushes sit beneath that shiny degree? Why is that Nikon camera still collecting dust while we're on our fifth Zoom interview? And why did those illustrations get buried beneath piles of CV copies?

Of course, not everyone has the luxury of quitting their job to pursue a creative career. It would be irresponsible and delusional to suggest otherwise. Financial uncertainty is real, and sometimes the sensible choice is the only choice we can afford to make. But maybe that's exactly why we shouldn't give up on our passions entirely. Maybe this is your sign to slow down on the hustling, even just a little. To stop treating everything you love as something you'll eventually get around to once your career is established, your savings are healthy and your life is finally under control.

Because if there's one thing I've learnt from losing a job I worked so hard to get, it's that doing everything right doesn't guarantee everything will work out. 

And the biggest mistake would be sacrificing every other version of ourselves for a career that can disappear because of a budget meeting. I'm not saying you should quit your job tomorrow. I'm saying you shouldn't have to quit your dreams just because you have one.

So maybe the next time we send that LinkedIn application, we can take a look at that sewing machine gathering dust in the corner and remember that there's still a part of us worth making time for. 

The economy is fucked. You might as well chase your dreams.

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Photo © Rayan Hakouti Photographer by Albane Durand-Viel (@albanedurandviel)