We were lucky to catch up with Aya Hage recently and have shared our conversation below.

Aya, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I am definitely happier on the artistic path I’ve been on for the past couple years. Admittedly the “what if” of having a regular job resurfaces in my thoughts every now and again, since I do have a bachelor’s degree and had a few 9 to 5-type jobs that require a college degree. Unfortunately it’s very much a slippery slope into bouts of guilt, because I put in the work to qualify for those kinds of jobs on paper, the income was comfortable and consistent, and the benefits were fairly decent… yet I made the decision to walk away from that world in exchange for a different path that guarantees none of the above.

Whenever I get sucked into that headspace, however, my loved ones are always first to remind me that I am oversimplifying my memories of those jobs, and that I seem to forget the state of my mental and physical health at the time. I was essentially a nervous wreck from the time I clocked in till the time I clocked out, I always found something to panic over, my confidence in my own work had depleted to an all time low, I would have an accumulation of stress from the prior week carrying over into the next week. I didn’t know it then, but I was already suffering from chronic fatigue as well. I was pretty much deteriorating just to maintain the right to say that I could handle a ‘normal’ adult job.

I still wander close to that pitfall of guilt every now and again, to this day, but it was through having those jobs that I was able to properly piece together why none of them were working out for me long term. It had nothing to do with the “what” of the job (required skills or task difficulty) and had almost everything to do with the “how” (the structure of the workflow or the company). The way I process information, the way I try to build out plans and execute them, the way I communicate… my work style is incompatible with how lots of corporate jobs are set up. I could never get a consistent answer on the correct way to go about getting my work done because the goal post always seemed to move- so I would still get some ‘points off’, no matter what I did.

Aya, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve always been fascinated with ‘adornments’ whether it was jewelry, head dresses, body accessories or even little trinkets placed or hung as decorations in a room, and I’ve always enjoyed creating things by hand.

The more beautiful things I had come across in my life, the stronger my desire grew to make such beautiful things. Through reverse engineering things I already owned and rigorous trial and error, I gradually taught myself different techniques. As I improved I began to organically find ways to get better results consistently, whether it was finding a more efficient way to make something, substituting one of the materials with something new, or even combining certain techniques together.

What I am most proud of about Druid Nocturna is how much I’ve accomplished almost entirely on my own and that my desire to continue on, as an artist and as a business, is still going strong. The fact that I’ve kept up with crafting long enough for my hands to finally bring to life just about anything that comes to my head is such a satisfying feeling, as an artist. The endless sea of crowns and chokers and body jewelry that my teenage self saved on pinterest, things she could only dream of owning or even seeing in person… it’s a warm, fuzzy thought that I’ve grown into an artist who can make her all those things and then some.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Two major points

First, our society takes a lot of basic comforts for granted that we completely forget that they were given to us by some kind of artist. The shows and movies we enjoy were given to us by actors, writers, videographers, and many more. The clothes we wear were given to us by fashion designers, textile artisans, and many more. Makeup is a form of art, gardening is a form of art, music is a form of art, even food is a form of art. You can think of any kind of artist, and their medium will have positively impacted your life in some sort of way, directly or indirectly. For any kind of artist that you don’t believe impacts your life… they still do, just by a more intricate connection of dots that might not be detectable to you on the surface.

Second, in most cases money is typically not the primary metric that an artist will use to gauge whether or not our art is worth doing, our love and passion must come first. The desire to make a living off of art is not rooted in a desire to have money, it is rooted in the ability to recognize that money is a necessity to survive in current society; it is the only way we can remove things in our lives that take us away from our art. If someone can make a living off their art, but on a personal level they feel indifferent or even dislike it… then it potentially feels no different from a mundane, ‘regular’ day job.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Support artists at all levels, not just the ones ‘at the top’. Actively seek out smaller artists, whether it’s searching online or asking the artists you already know if anyone in their ‘network’ dabbles in whatever art you’re looking for. Recommend smaller artists to your friends and family. PAY FOR ART. Even people who perservere through society’s heavy discouragement to pursue art as a career, the path to being successful in almost any realm of art is unfairly and heavily paywalled. So even if a young artist has skill or talent that parallels world-class professionals, they might not “make it” simply because the only way to get their work in front of the right people is to attend an art college that they cannot afford.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://druidnocturna.com
• Instagram: @druidnocturna
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DruidNocturna
• Twitter: @druidnocturna
• Other: Bluesky: @druidnocturna.bsky.social

Image Credits

Roaming Roach Photography (Lauren Jewell)