Original premade book cover by BoN Editions
Being an artist is great.
Running a creative business is even better.
You get a lot of freedom. You can work whenever you want. You get to work on things you actually care about. There is no boss asking you at nine in the morning, “Where’s the report?” And there is no coworker appearing beside your desk at two in the afternoon with the dreaded words:
“Do you have a minute?”
No.
I don’t have a minute.
I never did.
That’s why I chose to work for myself.
Then I discovered something rather unfortunate.
I am the boss.
And the employee.
And the marketing department.
And the accountant.
And the designer.
And customer service.
And, on certain days, the poor unpaid intern who apparently forgot to ask for a day off.
But there is another strange side effect to running a creative business.
You can get lonely.
Not necessarily because you dislike people.
Sometimes it’s simply because a creative mind has a rather inconvenient habit.
You don’t get one idea about something.
You get five.
One idea produces three more. The third reminds you of something completely different. Then you suddenly realize that the completely different thing is somehow connected to the original idea.
And now you can’t possibly go back to what you were doing.
Because this new thing has to be done too.
And while all of this is happening, the idea feels incredibly important.
As if the future of humanity depends on it.
It might not.
It might just be a book cover idea.
But you can’t know that yet.
Meanwhile, the outside world has the audacity to keep moving.
People go to work. They go shopping. They talk to each other. They go on vacation. They eat ice cream before it melts. They meet friends.
And I’m sitting in front of my computer solving a problem that, as far as I know, nobody else is even aware exists.
And the worst part?
I’m having a wonderful time.
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I’m actually quite good company for myself.
I’m not a people-hater. I like people.
I just sometimes have to remind myself that they exist.
This doesn’t always happen naturally.
Sometimes my own thoughts are so entertaining that I simply don’t have enough attention left for anybody else’s.
Then, at some point, I realize that I have spent the entire day alone again.
And in one sense, that’s perfectly fine.
In another sense, it’s slightly concerning.
Take the swimming pool.
I like the sea.
I like lakes too.
There’s something calming about natural water.
A public swimming pool is different.
There is a pool.
Full of people.
More specifically: full of strangers.
Mostly wearing swimsuits.
But still.
Lots of them.
Standing and swimming next to each other.
In the same water.
And then I’m supposed to get in too.
Into the human soup.
I have never understood why it is considered completely normal for large numbers of strangers to soak themselves together in the same pool.
I don’t even like finding a floating hair in my own bathwater.
And I definitely don’t want to discover a mysterious hair floating across my back when I’m trying to relax.
I don’t know where it came from.
I don’t know who it belongs to.
And, most importantly, I have absolutely no interest in meeting its owner.
This is probably why I prefer the sea.
At least there, if something touches my leg, I can blame a fish.
Psychologically, that is much easier to accept.
There is, of course, one major advantage to running your own creative business.
You can start working whenever you want.
And you can stop whenever you want.
Nobody will tell you otherwise.
At least officially.
In reality, I tell myself.
And it turns out I’m a surprisingly strict boss.
Much stricter than I would probably be with an actual employee.
If someone working for me said:
“I’m not working anymore today. I’m exhausted.”
I would probably say:
“That’s completely understandable. Go rest.”
If I say the exact same thing to myself, another voice immediately appears in my head:
“Fine. And when exactly are you planning to finish?”
That is one of the great disadvantages of being your own boss.
You don’t have a boss.
You have something worse.
You.
Sometimes I think:
If I work really hard today, I can rest tomorrow.
Spoiler:
No.
That is not how this works.
Tomorrow is not an empty day politely waiting for you to arrive.
Tomorrow is already full.
Full of new tasks.
New ideas.
New problems.
And, naturally, new ideas about the new ideas.
You think that if you get everything done today, tomorrow will finally be free.
This is roughly the same as believing that if you clean your house perfectly once, you will never have to clean it again.
I have some bad news for anyone who has ever believed that.
Dust is an entrepreneur too.
And this is where one of the strangest traps of running a creative business begins.
Freedom.
Because you really are free.
You just have to manage your own freedom.
You have to decide your working hours.
You have to give yourself permission to rest.
You have to set your own boundaries.
And when you finally say:
“Okay. That’s enough for today.”
it is incredibly easy to do just one more thing.
Then one more.
Then you have an idea.
You quickly write it down.
Then you realize that the idea requires another idea.
The second idea requires a plan.
And the plan becomes something you’ll “just do tomorrow.”
And suddenly, there you are again.
Working.
At night.
In front of the computer.
After at least twenty-four hours without sleep.
Yes.
This actually happened to me.
Not because art demanded it.
Because I was being an idiot.
There is an important difference.
Art sometimes asks for sacrifices.
But that doesn’t mean you have to offer it your nervous system every time.
Because sleep deprivation has one particularly annoying side effect:
the next day, you are completely useless.
So I managed to work so much yesterday that I can’t properly work today.
From a business perspective, that is a genuinely impressive achievement.
I managed to overwork the first employee of my own company.
Me.
And the best part?
There is no HR department where I can file a complaint.
Maybe that’s why it is important to step outside our own heads sometimes.
Not necessarily by becoming a social butterfly.
You don’t need to make fifty new friends.
You don’t need to organize something every day.
And you certainly don’t have to learn to love swimming-pool hair.
You just have to remind yourself that the world does not exist exclusively inside your head.
There are people.
There are streets.
There are cafés.
There are lakes.
There are seas.
And there are completely pointless conversations that produce absolutely no business ideas.
Maybe that is exactly why they matter.
Not every moment has to be productive.
Not every thought needs to become a project.
Not every idea needs to be turned into something.
And not every tomorrow needs to be filled with tasks before it even arrives.
Sometimes you are allowed to simply exist.
I haven’t quite managed to integrate that particular feature of being human into my workflow yet.
I’m working on it.
Or rather…
I’ll start tomorrow.
Unless I get another idea before then.
Continue the Conversation
If this story resonated with you, here are three more you might enjoy.
– Dedicated or Obsessed? Science Is Still Debating
When does creative passion become obsession? Follow the strange logic of an artist whose brain refuses to stop producing ideas—even when the rest of the world has clearly gone home.
– Why Do Artists Keep Creating? | The Strange Psychology Behind Creative Passion
Why do artists keep creating when success is uncertain, money is scarce, and quitting would probably be much more sensible? Maybe the real question isn’t why we create—but why not creating feels even worse.
– The Mentor User Manual (That Somehow Never Comes in the Box)
You might think a mentor will hand you the secret formula for becoming a successful artist. Instead, you may discover something far less convenient: nobody can build your path for you—you have to figure out how to do it yourself.
One Less Thing to Do Tomorrow
You already have the story.
You already have the ideas. And if your creative brain is anything like mine, you probably already have three more projects waiting impatiently in the wings.
So maybe you don’t need to create everything from scratch.
If you’re an indie author looking for an exclusive premade book cover, take a look at my Etsy shop. Each cover is created for a single story and sold only once—because your book deserves a cover that’s as individual as the person who wrote it.
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One less thing to put on tomorrow’s list.
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