The artists of Steem

Well, this isn't actually about trials but if you have noticed your feeds running even slower than usual, I think one or two of the autovoters are down so if someone doesn't get their autovotes, they aren't going to post. I mean, what a waste of good content if it doesn't earn...

Anyway.

People seem to struggle with the idea here that they can't post what they want and get rewarded consistently for it, artists complain about Steem content getting rewarded while their art goes begging, writers about how they write for hours and earn a fraction of what a gamer might. Sometimes I wonder, what world do people actually live in that they expect to be rewarded for what they enjoy doing? Although that may be an ideal situation we could aim for, it is far from reality anywhere in this world currently.

My father was an artist. A very good artist and a relatively well known one who was accepted into Australia during white only policy (he is not white) on the back of his art. He was in his early thirties at that time but had been painting professionally since he was 12. Yes, he was getting paid for painting murals for movie releases at the age of 12 in Malacca in the late 1940s. What were you doing at 12? I was cleaning out newly constructed apartments of rubbish before they were painted.

However, his art career was bright in Australia, one-man exhibitions, a few notable awards and plenty of articles in news papers. He was without a doubt, an artist. However, that is not what earned him an income, that is not what paid his bills and later, his family's bills. He was also a teacher and he taught from the age of 16 in Malaysia to the age of 68 in Australia. He continued to teach art classes until he had a stroke 2 years ago at the age of 80.

Tell me, do you think he would have preferred to sit at home and spend 100s and 100s of hours using his hard-earned talents at smearing paint on canvas to create masterpieces or, go to work at 8 am each day to teach children who had very little respect for teachers, let alone one that was the only coloured person in their town?

You? What would you rather spend your time doing with your talents? Should society have provided an income to pay his bills based on his talent or, on what they deemed necessary in their community? When it comes to value for a community, I can guarantee that my father brought more value to the local community through his teaching than through the beautiful art he created. I still get messages occasionally on Facebook from ex students of his 20 years my senior to ask me to send their best to my father. They may never have seen one of his painting.

The beauty of Steem is that you can post absolutely whatever you want but, the expectation that you are going to get paid for it is a massive issue. People complain about reward being based on relationships without acknowledging that this is a social media. My father in the 60s, 70s, 80, 90s still had to create relationships with galleries, art critics, newspapers and art societies in order to get his work in front of eyes. For the most part, art isn't a solo journey to fame, it is a community effort and in my father's case, driven by he and my mother.

Steem is about relationships it has to be. No algorithm is going to deliver what a community needs, at least not anywhere near to soon. If you aren't willing to get out of what you like and do the hard work required to get what you like into the eyes of others, you are near destined to fail to earn. Nothing however is stopping you from posting, commenting, consuming and enjoying yourself.

Some people like myself who enjoy writing fiction are lucky because, that is not all I enjoy writing. I like poetry too, photography, philosophy, psychology, technology and most importantly perhaps, observing human behaviours. This means that I can quite happily write about Steem community interaction in regards to various factors and Still have a good time. Yay for me.

But, anyone can do it, anyone can start exploring their world and even though it might not be comfortable at first, they might start to enjoy playing in the areas that they used to avoid, that weren't for them. It is funny though to think at what point does my dad stop being an artist and start becoming a teacher? Why does there need to be this line? He was actually able to hold both positions simultaneously as well as husband and father to five children.

I feel that we live in a hedonistic world where people expect to be able to do only what makes them feel good without having to prepare any work space to support it. That is someone else's job. We are accustomed to outsourcing what we don't enjoy doing and having middlemen broker our deals so that we don't have to learn. How many children know where their steak comes from these days?

This place is about incentives, like all places, but rather than doing the work that allows for more of what is enjoyable, there is a cart before the horse approach where people do what is enjoyable and expect themselves to get to where they want to be. You want to be rewarded for your efforts, what are you really doing about making that so? You want your work to be seen, what are you doing about finding the places where that can actually happen?

The gig economy is hard work and it takes a massive amount of effort to get established enough so that rather than going to them, people will find you because you are established. This platform isn't for the weak of effort to make it here and there is a massive amount of work that goes on behind the scenes so that a post can earn a dollar, two or even maybe 20 or 100. 100... these days that is nearly exclusively for the land of bidbot self-votes. How good does my content need to be to encourage someone to vote on me instead of delegating their Steem Power to a bidbot? I try, it is a losing battle at this time though, things can change very quickly in this world.

Yep, autovoters are down so this might make 1.50, maybe 10 with 90 cents of that being from me. But, what value could it have beyond the post payout, what value could a reader derive from it, what value could it have to some members of the community? Hard to say but, it has the potential to go beyond the 7 days as the information with if read, can change a behaviour and even the slightest change can make a difference.

You are free to post whatever you want, engage however you want, talk with whoever you want, delegate, vote, discuss, in the way you want. We all are free to do the same but, expectation of reward is a losing game, if you want to be rewarded for what you do in this life, you have to find out what will provide those rewards. It isn't selling out, it isn't pandering, it isn't jumping on bandwagons. It is a choice to make, it is effort invested, it is work. Both action and inaction have consequences in a moving environment.

Perhaps it will pay off, perhaps not. You think that the only way to express your creativity is through a painting, a poem a song? If so, you have put your creativity into a box, you have labelled yourself, limited yourself and resigned yourself to a narrow path of experience and expression.

You call yourself an artist?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]