Except, of course, you are.
You’ve acquired some level of skill or experience in doing something, to the point where businesses are prepared to give you money in exchange for your time doing it. It could be mental or physical rent, but you have a commodity to sell on the open market and here we are, capitalism a-go-go.
But really is this such a bad thing? Why, yes. No matter what I do now or have done for a job in the past, you can bet your ass I’d rather be doing something else. It doesn’t matter how much I get paid, or what my ‘career progression’ looks like, if I need to be paid in order to do something – then I probably don’t want to do it.
One of the problems about being a (part time) artist, one that produces art as a side-hustle to a ‘real job’ is that you worry about your art becoming your job. Would you still enjoy it, if you had to do it, in order to eat?
We’re lucky in modern Western society that we’re unlikely to face that particular conundrum in real life. Especially those of us with dependents.
But if someone asks me what I do, I don’t tell them I’m a senior sales rep at a car dealership. I tell them I’m a writer, actor and musician. That gets rid of them pretty quick, let me tell you.