It’s often our dumbest beliefs that end up sticking the hardest, which is probably why they stick in the first place: surely we couldn’t be that dumb, and these beliefs, these persistent thoughts, couldn’t be our own. We’re bigger and better and wiser than all that, right?

It’s probably why I’ve allowed myself to internalise the belief that the arts are ‘soft’ and that virtually all other academic and professional paths are more concrete and serious. This did not dissuade me from placing the arts at the centre of my life in all the ways that could possibly matter. But neither did this Superego-ish thrumming of the status quo embolden me to adopt a stance of rebellious resistance, to reshape these attacks into a permanent middle finger that could serve as both shield and sword as I’d go about my business of creating, working and living.

Instead, I accepted that I am “like that” and that the rest of the world is “not like that” and so I will continue to exist as a lesser aberration worthy of some scraps, but little else.

This is all a cliche’. Both the self-identification as an artist, and the casting of oneself against a hostile, machine-like world whose sole aim is, apparently, to crush you and ‘others like you’ (only a nominally more nuanced category than the above) because the world, apparently, has very little else to do but to train its crosshairs on your psychic obliteration.

But this is what I mean about dumb beliefs.

They are those flat, single-hued, pastel coloured slogans that remain latched onto us like childhood friends we never thought to shake off despite the fact that it’s clearly not working out for either party, at least not anymore.

I guess I never thought to excise it wholesale because it allowed me to slide into something resembling a stable identity, while also making it look like I’m marking myself safe from the pitfalls of delusion. I wouldn’t hide from the fact that I wanted to make art, and would even gesture towards making it known that I would like this to become a sustainable full-time career some day. But the self-deprecating gene would creep in, because this is the gene that transmits a secondary dumb belief: the idea that debasing yourself while adding an ironic wink to the proceedings would ensure you are socially accepted because you’ve denuded yourself of any possibility of self-exposure.

But enough, now.

Working in the arts, within whichever of its many-stranded disciplines and at whatever capacity, means that you build a resilience that virtually no supposedly ‘more serious’ member of society can even dream – or have nightmares – about. I don’t want to dismiss the micro-hardships of anyone’s journey, necessarily, but… I’m pretty sure it’s fairly straightforward for a lawyer’s son to also become a lawyer and have 1.5 kids and 2 cars and the house if they just keep their head down and stick to the established path.

Our Hypothetical Lawyer Friend will never have to churn out creative work in the grouting between ‘mundane’ jobs, while also battling the twin hydra of: ‘this may not even become anything at all’ and ‘you still need to give it all of your focus and energy – this isn’t something you can phone in’.

Neither will he have to deal with troubling inter-personal dynamics within collaborative creative environments, where there’s rarely any union and almost certainly no HR department to report exploitative, abusive, toxic or manipulative behaviour to.

And while failure and obliteration is potentially baked into every single area of life, and while Hypothetical Lawyer could easily find themselves staring down a barrel of a case that doesn’t quite go as planned, with a disappointed client even potentially ending up behind bars, there’s something uniquely pungent about putting up a show that nobody shows up for and a book that nobody ends up reading.

This is all obvious, but it’s the obvious stuff that we forget first. And obvious is the antidote to dumb.