We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful C.M. O’Brien. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with C.M. below.

Alright, C.M. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

First and foremost, while I understand the question being presented here, I need to stress that being an artist or a creative is not considered a “regular job” only because we don’t get paid what we’re worth for it per hour by some overseeing official. We get paid for the completed product that is eventually sold—and more often than not we don’t receive the full amount of what that is worth, either. We get virtually nothing for the multiple hours of work we put in behind the scenes: the hours of planning, creating, producing, marketing, editing, crying, pulling our hair out, etc. that the consumers never see. If we did, we would definitely be making far more than what our “regular jobs” have ever provided. I have willingly burnt myself out on multiple occasions with my creative work BECAUSE I love it, and I AM happier doing it. I gladly work overtime all the time for my creative endeavors, and knowing I am not getting the credit I deserve for it is a constant mental and emotional obstacle I have to face, and frequently makes it even harder than it already is to accomplish anything. And yet, I still do it. And I still do it joyfully.

See, I have had one of those “regular job” things before. I was working the standard eight hours a day, five days a week in a retail job that paid me twelve dollars an hour for what was really, when it came down to it, six different jobs in one. On more than one occasion I found myself up on a ladder getting a product down for a customer WHILE the phone started ringing, WHILE someone was waiting for a fitting room to be unlocked, WHILE a line was forming at the registers, WHILE I was shouting the standard “welcome spiel” to the person who just came through the door, WHILE a staff member from the back room was bringing out a third or fourth cart of products I was expected to put away, WHILE the one other staff member they bothered to keep up front with me was on their lunch break. And that’s not to mention the general, unnecessary, flat-out rudeness of about a third of the customers that entered the place. I came home exhausted and irritated every evening, and every morning I would wake at six a.m. and stare into the abyss for about ten minutes before I finally found it in me to make it into the shower. I spent my two days off sleeping and/or doing laundry and cleaning when and if I had the energy for it, all the while dreading my coming Monday. I was MISERABLE. Sure, I had a steady paycheck, but my life essentially had no meaning. My days gave me nothing to look forward to. In all honesty, I often found comfort in a fantasy of falling asleep and not waking up again.

Now, I am in a better place in so many different ways. I still have a “regular job” for the sake of paying the bills, but it’s a job I enjoy that still leaves me plenty of time and energy to work on my creative projects. But I try to remember all the time that I am extremely lucky in this regard. A lot of creative minds are still withering away at that 9 to 5 nightmare they cannot seem to wake from. And unfortunately for the rest of us, we might never get to witness the wonderful art they could otherwise have brought into the world if they were just allowed the opportunity to do so.

So, am I happier as an artist / creative? Yes. Exceedingly so. Do I sometimes think about what it would be like to have, as society puts it, a “regular job?” Only if I want to fall into a state of despair.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Caley (she / they), but most of my professional work is done under the name C.M. O’Brien.

I am first and foremost a writer, but my true passion is telling stories in any form or medium that feels right. I wrote, formatted, and illustrated my first “book” when I was seven years old—a highly plagiarized and badly put together book, but a book all the same. And looking back on it, I realize that one little project conceived of by a seven-year-old has defined my career as a thirty-something adult. I do a little bit of everything with my work: I write, I format, I edit, I design, and I market. If I had the budget and the tools for it, I would probably print and bind as well. And while I frequently seek help from others for larger projects, particularly professional editors and illustrators, at the heart of things I’m just one person putting together something they think is worthwhile for others to see—sometimes fumbling over a new aspect of the job, and sometimes striding onward with complete confidence. To be perfectly frank, I am no different from any other self-published writer out there when it comes to the type and the amount of work I put in. But, also like any other storyteller out there, I bring my own personal perspective and experiences to the worlds I create. Often, I write about personal connection because that is what I strive to do with my work: connect with and create a community of fellow artists, dreamers, and seekers in my own little corner of the world.

I spent much of my youth reading or scribbling in a notebook, but it wasn’t until I got to high school that I started considering making storytelling a career and not just a hobby. In 2017, I graduated from Southern Oregon University with my BFA in Creative Writing and went on to earn a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on arts and business. When the pandemic hit, I spent much of my time at home developing “Nocturnal Mind,” my personal blog and website dedicated to my writing and thoughts on storytelling. As part of my goal for building a community of artists, my website also provides writing tips and prompts, and asks questions that will hopefully spark debate and deeper conversations about stories and the ways we tell them.

I am the author of “Don’t Bully Buster,” a children’s story about friendship and empathy in the face of bullying, and a young adult fantasy novel titled, “The Wishtalker.” The novel in particular is something that began forming in my mind when I was seventeen and only just beginning my journey. It has since grown and changed alongside me, and while I still believe to this day that it is not perfect, it’s the project I am the most proud of, and a sequel to it is currently in the works.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Unfortunately, there is no one magical thing we can do to establish a thriving creative ecosystem. For starters, we have to entirely deconstruct the “money, power, and status first” society we have become and build a world where creativity, discovery, and curiosity are the most important things a human being can strive for. And that is going to take a lot of time and effort, if it even happens for us at all.

Like my experience dragging myself out of the dark pit of retail, we need to focus on the fact that everything actually worth living for comes from our ability, and our NEED, to be creative; that human beings, since the dawn of time, have gathered strength from community, and gathered community from creativity–from the stories they told, from the pictures they drew, from the languages they developed, from the concepts and strategies they came up with that made survival in a hostile world easier. And a lot of this comes down to education. And education comes down, unfortunately, to government. And government comes down to the people.

So, I guess in my long-winded way of putting things, I am saying that the best things we can do to support artists and creatives is to vote as though our futures depend on it, and to take whatever chances we have to educate and show others that art and creativity are a necessary part of our existence.

It’s a big ask, I know.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was that “business has no place in art.” Ever since I was that seven-year-old kid putting together their first book, I found words like “business” and “profit” and “budget” to be dirty words that had no right to be floating around in my brain let alone coming out of my mouth. It wasn’t until I went off to college that it started becoming clear how necessary the practice of “business” is even for creative careers.

I think the problem rests with a lot of creatives associating the concept of “business” with those other concepts of “money, power, and status.” You know, the concepts that we abhor. But in actuality, a lot of “business” comes down to budgeting (a necessary evil), networking (connecting with other artists and seeing what you can do for each other), marketing (making it easier for people to see you and your work), and management (making sure things that are supposed to get done are gotten done). These are all things that are incredibly necessary in the long run for anyone wanting to have any kind of career, especially an independently creative one. But like everything else in life, “business” takes practice. I still struggle with managing the business side of my work, but my very first step was acknowledging that it did, in fact, matter to me in the first place.

Fortunately, I think the attitude surrounding business has changed a bit since I was seven. I see a lot of independent artists in media nowadays not only acknowledging the role business plays in their careers, but EMBRACING it. And I think this attitude is something that should be taken into consideration when it comes to any kind of schooling in the arts. In fact, my Master’s thesis was all about trying to bridge the gap between business and creativity and how a lot of arts students feel left behind by school curricula that fail to recognize that relationship.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nocturnalmind.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/c.m._obrien

Image Credits

Photography – Kyle Asher

Illustrations, “Don’t Bully Buster,” – Corey O’Brien

Illustrations, “The Wishtalker,” – Cassie Levy

Graphic Design – C.M. O’Brien