I'm Not an Artist
I'm also not a writer. Or a game developer. Or a game designer. Or a programmer. Or a...()
Labels unnerve me. My LGS owner saw me with a set of paint and asked me if I was an artist. I have to introduce myself in a new community and mull whether I should pick Programmer or Writer or both or none.
I do code. I do write. I do make games. I do web dev. I draw, I guess. To a degree, I have done everything and then some in the decades I walk this earth, I have something to show for all of them (plenty, actually), and if money exchanging hands is a prerequisite for a title I've met that too. I try my hardest to keep my hobby as a hobby, but over the course of the years having these as fallback side hustles really did save me even if I never particularly enjoy doing them this way.
Labels still unnerve me. As a jack-of-all-trades with boundless curiosity, borderline unhealthy tenacity, and constant financial problems, my friends and family have troubles telling people what I actually do for a living. It's almost a running joke. Even I can't tell, though to make things simpler these days I have a main day job should an occupational moniker be needed.
I see the labels as something you pick up if you intend to pursue it. If it's something you're good at? It feels uncouth for me to wear them in my flippant hands. I certainly don't intend to be a "professional". I enjoy the activities enough, I get better at most of them, but it feels wrong to don one. What constitutes good anyway?
Is this not me gatekeeping my own self? But I hold fast in the power of words. The name you call yourself represents what you are to the society. I add and rotate and mix my interests, ever amorphous, and I intend to keep it that way. I just like to make things.
So whenever people ask, it would always stump me.
Sure, I say. I write. I draw. Yeah, I designed this. I made that. Call me whatever you wish, but I will not use that to call myself. I may call myself a creator, had the term not been irreversibly ruined in the last ten years.
Labels unnerve me, but I don't really care anymore, for the most part. If I have to pick one title to describe me though, it's none of the above. I'm a Reader. That's how I approach the world. That's how I fill the gaps in my knowledge.
And that's enough.