more thoughts on careering wildly

thank you everybody for your contributions to the discussion in the previous post. I hope the Lamb has found information of use there and let me say it was never my intent to be callous, sarcastic or hurtful in my answers, merely as honest as i could be.

it occurred to me that i should have included more in my answer. eg that my income is not derived entirely from simply colouring cloth
but from a number of sources

it is important to distribute the eggs between several baskets
in case you trip up
in my case it means writing books and articles [most of these don't pay, Handeye bless them, DO]
making costumes for dance
teaching classes in dyeing cloth/paper , felt-making, stitch, garment re-construction, pieced cloth
or various combinations
taking the odd dress commission [but only from people i feel empathy with, otherwise it's too hard for me to make something that will work]
and in between finding time to 

i do teach a lot.
teaching is the main source of keeping body and soul together.
to keep the teaching fresh
no class is ever exactly repeated
the topic may be similar
but there will always be something [at least] a little different
otherwise
i might speedily find myself confined to social nutworking in a secure facility
luckily
the kind of work i do
seems to attract interesting people
with whom it is a pleasure to spend time
and
plants and water are different around the whirled
which means there is always something new for me to learn as well

i noted among the comments to the earlier post
mention of health insurance, long service leave etc.
these benefits do not attach to this particular sole practitioner
on the other hand
i don't have to ask for permission
if i suddenly decide that pouring walnut dye onto a piece of organic cotton canvas in a motel carpark on the California coast is the best way to spend that particular morning

i noted also that one contributor mentioned she had found her soulmate early on and that the soulmate made it possible for her to chase her dreams
she's one of the Lucky Ones
i've met quite a few folk whose Significant Other is happy to be a Patron of the Arts.
guess the other option is to chain your soul to an educational institution in the hope of the security of tenure
but then
you also have to do the Devil's Work
administration / marking / constant justification of you being there / sucking up to people you might not otherwise want to give the time of day

as a friend of mine [who sadly drank himself to death in his 39th year*]
once said
"life is a rich tapestry
of loose ends"

*Christine's comment to the earlier post about a life on anti-depressants strikes firmly home here