A few months ago, I found myself wondering: would I ever call myself an artist?
In my elevator pitch, I usually say I’m “a creative”—a noun that sits between how society frames my work and how it actually feels to me. A mix of corporate-sanctioned legitimacy and the feeling of constantly exhaling iridescent carbon dioxide.
But an artist? What would people say if I called myself that? Would they scoff? Would I have to defend it?
Instead of staying in that question, which is obviously loaded, I started thinking about effort and everything it entails.
A lot of people I know are making things on the side—writing, painting, drumming, you name it. Others are training for couch-to-5Ks or their first triathlons. Showing up day after day. Building off the clock, quietly and consistently.
But if you ask them about it, you’ll almost always hear some version of this:
“I’m an aspiring writer.”
“An aspiring drummer.”
“I’m trying to get into running.”
People are doing the work, but they still hesitate to claim what they’re becoming.
I do this, too. I sew and work at a theatre, but I don’t always frame that as “me.” When people ask what I do, I lean on my paid work—writing and editing—because it feels more official. Verified by a paycheck, a title, someone else’s approval. A kind of permission we learn to wait for.
But we all know, on some level, that this is flawed.
No distance makes a hobbyist a runner. No cadence makes an aspiring drummer drum for real this time. And as a work-verified writer, I can tell you there’s no clean moment when your writing becomes more “real” than anyone else’s.
Still, the hedging matters. It protects us from the vulnerability of being seen trying in a culture where the safest posture is chill. Detached. Effortless. Or at least the appearance of it.
Which is exactly what keeps people stuck in aspiration—sometimes indefinitely.
In that environment, aspiration loses its gravity. It becomes a holding pattern, where you wait for permission to name something that’s already being built through your time, attention, and effort.
So I looked at my own life.
My space is intentional—quiet, soft, colorful. I’m surrounded by things I’ve made, and people who make things too. I fall into intense creative spells and need long stretches of solitude to follow them through. I write at odd hours, fix things, make things, talk about making things.
My feelings and ideas show up in my face, my words, my space, my clothes.
I’m already living like an artist. Because I am one.
The only reason that feels questionable is because no one has formally granted permission, but nothing I do is waiting for that permission to begin with.
Effort, in that sense, is a throughline. It quietly confirms what you are already doing.
And in that framework, identity becomes less about what you’ve achieved, and more about what you’re willing to name while you’re still becoming it.
