We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chris Kalman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Chris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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?

You know, to be honest, I never really equated being an artist with a path of ease, or even happiness. You look at all the great artists, and they don’t really seem happy, do they? Bukowski, Dickinson, Van Gogh, etc. I have known some immensely talented artists whose gifts did not remotely translate into happiness. Now I’m not a great artist, but there was a time in my life when I thought I might want to put my writing front and center. Elevate it above all else in terms of importance. Even my naive and relatively stupid 20-something self knew that was not going to be a path to happiness.

It’s nice, of course, to be able to give expression to the things that pull at your heartstrings. But when you have to make a living doing that, hell, making the physical art is just a really small, and probably not even the most significant, part of your job. You have to constantly be selling yourself, proselytizing your own self-importance, managing these nauseatingly solipsistic social media accounts. I’m pretty sure that’s not the road to happiness. Not for me, anyway. That’s the road to me wanting to punch myself in the face every time I look in the mirror (which I try not to do terribly often on principle, anyway).

I think what artists and creatives often forget is that so-called “regular” jobs actually matter. I’ll give you an example. The plumbing in my house backed up just now. I mean literally, just an hour ago. Couldn’t flush the toilet or drain water from the tub. So we called a plumber. He came, and fixed the problem, and we can go on living again as usual. That’s really quite remarkable, if you think about it. There’s a lot of honor in holding down a “regular” job and helping the world go round. Artists, I think, tend to need the world more than the world needs artists. Not that artists are unneeded. I just think there are far more of them than necessary.

When I think of happiness, I guess I tend to think of that old Tolstoy quote: “A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbour — such is my idea of happiness.” And while Tolstoy himself didn’t fit that description, I think we’ve got to assume that when he wrote those words, he knew them to be true. There’s also that beautiful Pablo Neruda poem, Me Declaro Culpable, in which he laments having not done something useful with the hands he was given, like making a broom.

But you know, I was never super successful with my writing. Not financially, anyway. And if someone waved a magic wand and told me I could just write books for the rest of my life, and never work a “regular” job again, I’d probably sign on the dotted line. So maybe this is all just sour grapes.

I’m actually about to start a “regular” job, and while I am nervous about maybe not getting as much time off as I’d like, I’m also really looking forward to not having to do all the completely cringe marketing and self-promo that I used to any more. It’s possible I’ll be more productive with my actual art once it is no longer tied to my income. We will see.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

I’ve basically had two lifelong passions: climbing, and writing. In that order. In my little niche, it would have made good sense to pick up photography, but any time I dabbled, it always ruined or profaned the experience of climbing for me. I couldn’t be bothered to be taken out of the moment. Writing was a good fit because I could do it from home after the fact.

While I’ve been writing essentially my whole life, I didn’t really consider it a viable professional skill until I’d already been publishing articles in climbing magazines for a number of years. At this point, I’ve been writing in the outdoor industry for almost 15 years. If you happen to be a climber, you may have heard of me, or read something I’ve written. But if you’re not, you wouldn’t know me from Adam (Ondra). Climbing is like anime: all-consuming to its devotees, but utterly irrelevant to everyone else.

I guess what I like is writing little stories that reveal ourselves to ourselves. Climbers can be a sanctimonious bunch. It’s good to have someone from within their ranks prodding them from time to time. Stories like that can be nonfiction, or journalistic, but I tend to think fiction is the medium if you really want to be honest about something. The nonfiction world is full of hagiography and yellow journalism. Maybe the whole point of fiction is to give us an arena where we can actually tell the unspeakable truths that are far too glaring when they pertain to actual people, places, and things we hold dear.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

There were a whole list of questions to choose from, but for whatever reason, this one caught my eye. I basically think NFTs are the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of. I don’t get it. And honestly, I don’t even want to get it. I think I’m generally a curious person, but when someone talks to me about NFTs, I feel like that scene in Billy Madison when that guy says “we are all stupider from having listened to the mindless drivel you just said.”

As far as I can tell, the whole premise of NFTs is the greater fool theory. It also seems to have a lot to do with posturing, signaling. It’s like wearing a rolex just so everyone knows you can afford a rolex. It’s dumb. Literally every wisdom tradition or religion since time immemorial could take one quick look at NFTs, and immediately realize this shit is not going to make the world a better place, or the owner of the NFT a better/happier person.

But all this NFT hysteria is going to sputter out like tulips in Denmark. It won’t last forever. I just wish all these rich assholes would realize sooner than later that instead of wasting their money on this frivolous shit, they could be doing something useful in the world. You know, like tackling big world problems, like hunger, deforestation, climate change, racism, rampant poverty, etc. Can you imagine if all the money that was spent on NFTs each year went instead to nonprofits working to improve the planet? Jesus.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’ve got like 2700 instagram followers. I don’t know where they came from. I don’t use hashtags, or play those sociopathic games some people do where you follow someone just to get them to follow you back. The whole idea of trying to acquire followers feels icky to me. In fact, I definitely regard social media as a disease—a highly virulent and deeply destructive one. It may be the single greatest problem of the 21st century. It’s definitely an addictive substance… I try not to use it, but like any junky, I inevitably relapse from time to time.

The truth is, I used instagram to help me sell my books, which I self-published. Totally mercenary. Facebook, on the other hand, I used initially to stay in touch with friends around the world. But facebook morphed into the gross surveillance and advertising platform it is now, and people can feel that, and that puts them in a bad mood, and so people on facebook (I quickly discovered) were far less likely to buy something than people on instagram were. But then again, instagram has changed too in the past few years. Way more ads now, and so-called influencers and stuff like that.

Like I said, I try not to mess wish social media. I guess my one piece of advice would be to use the tool, not to be the tool. And as for Twitter, now that Elon Musk is at the helm, count me out. That slimy sleezeball is going to manipulate elections with his new toy, and that is both sad and infuriating. I’d like nothing more than to see Twitter shrivel up and wither away… just like NFTs.

Contact Info:

• Website: chriskalman.com