Establishing the Creative Lifestyle

Introduction to this series.

Hi Folks,

If you have been following my substack page for the last year you will know that I have been sporadically playing around with what I might do with this online publication. I think I have finally decided what I am going to do. I am going to focus on the Creative Lifestyle as my theme or motif. I have unpublished a number of unrelated posts to clean up the page and keep it all related.

I set up a paywall for people who are paid subscribers and a number of people have already subscribed to my surprise. Thank You! Now that I am a professional writer I am going to get serious with it. At first nothing will be restricted but as more content is posted or if I think something should be reserved for the paying subscribers, things will be available for about six months before it is blocked behind the paywall.

My secret plan is to eventually make the posts in the Touchonian a book about the Creative Lifestyle for Artists. You, my favorite readers, are privy to the book in it’s raw formation. I would really appreciate your help by making comments, asking questions and suggesting topics I should explore and write about. It is hard for me to dream up what artists need and want to know to keep going and keep creating. I have fifty years of figuring out all of the details I needed to keep going and become self-sustaining as an artist and want to share enough insight to smooth the path for others facing this complicated, daunting task of being a self-sustaining artist. I know from experience it can feel overwhelming, unreachable and even depressing. So feel free to say or ask something! Thanks in advance.

Please leave comments, questions, topic ideas, etc

I think of myself as a natural born artist. Being an artist was always my main intention since at least high school. I have been a working artist for the last forty years. At times it has been tough, hard to figure out and sometimes very good. The last decade or so has been great in terms of being reliably self-sustaining without doing other things. This blog or newsletter or publication is about my ideas related to establishing a creative lifestyle, especially a self sustaining lifestyle and what I think it takes to create one and maintain it based on my own experience and experimentation.

I decided back in July of 2022 to start keeping a Stoic inspired daily journal and I use a word document that is always open on my desktop to capture any textual materials that I write down which includes daily notes about what I am doing for the day, when I woke up, when I went to sleep and whatever in between. Also collage poetry, correspondence, articles, interviews, notes and anything else written.

Some of my journal notes explore looking at how I got started thinking about being an artist, some are about my exploration of different spiritual or philosophical ideas that relate to being an artist, some explore what it takes to try to develop the self sustaining business part of being an artist. It is a journal, so it is pretty casual. I will also include at least one image in each post because I make a lot of art and I document everything.

When I am writing about the creative life, I mostly have my own kids in mind, who are 43, 37 and 28 years old at the moment. Th oldest and youngest are both doing their best to develop and live out their creative lifestyles. So I am mostly thinking about this age range in the writings I will present here. The writings will be selected from my journal entries that I think might provide some good advice or food for thought to young creative people trying to figure out their own creative lifestyle.

DISCLAIMER: I only know what I know and I only know so much and I have already forgotten most of it. So there is the limit.

Please subscribe if you are willing and able. This will encourage me to continue providing this content and to keep writing about all of the various angles of how to think about your artistic activity and how to build a lifestyle around it that will help you keep going.

Thanks for reading. This is a completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books and/or become a paid subscriber

Would love to hear from you, leave a comment.