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

Hi CJ, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

At 40, I was finally diagnosed with and treated for ADHD, and in the process learned much more about what it actually is. It turns out my extensive history of school (6 colleges, 9+ majors ) and work are pretty classic behaviors, explaining SO MUCH about my life. Since then, I’ve managed to claw my way out of years of depression. I’ve greatly expanded my definition of personal and professional success. I stopped “shoulding all over myself” by trying not to get hung up on what I should do with my career. Trying to fit my square peg into a round hole hasn’t worked for me once yet, so I rebranded as The Eclectic Domestic and relaunched my shop with things that I enjoy making, not just what I think will be popular. My shop is doing great, and I’m happier than ever making what I love. We can never go back and change our choices, but I do wish I had spent less time forcing myself into jobs and education that I think will make me the most profitable. Living a life I love and that is truly authentic to me is more important.

CJ, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I didn’t get started in my professional art journey until my early 30s, but I’ve always been drawn back to creative pursuits. I’d hated every one of the numerous jobs I’d had. I would get bored and annoyed quickly because it was either meaningless, monotonous, boring, or involved customer service. I quit most of them in under a year. Same with college. Four colleges and 5 majors in about 3 years. (Much later, I would learn this is textbook behavior for people with ADHD.) I knew a pick-and-choose type liberal arts degree would have suited me best but believed would be a waste of time and money because Employers Like Real Majors. But man, I struggled. I struggled to stay on track when I very much didn’t give a crap about what I was learning. I struggled with my mental health and was diagnosed as having Bipolar II when I was 20, which added a layer of difficulty to my increasingly complicated life.

Eventually, I followed my love of cooking to culinary school (and my then-husband’s card magic career) to Las Vegas, where I wound up kicking major ass in college for the first time in my life. I was engaged AF. I won merit scholarships and national recipe competitions. My team medaled in an American Culinary Federation competition, which was incredibly rare for a team’s first showing. I earned my degree with pride, but I learned pretty quickly that I was not cut out for an industry where they turn 3000 covers every night. The distance between my love of the creative, personal side of the culinary industry and the body-breaking hours of monotony in industrial kitchens was too wide a bridge to gap. Unsurprisingly, I left within a year and eventually went back to school with a brand-new major. It was all pretty miserable.
By 2012, I’d left school (again). I was working a job I hated (again), but I’d come out, gotten divorced and met the woman I’ve loved ever since. I was fully out, feeling good, and feeling authentic. I started dabbling in stencil art for fun. It eventually evolved into full-size multi-layer pieces, and around this time I met a collective of local artists called The Artistic Armory.

They were my kind of people, making my kind of art. Low-brow, no-brow, street art, activist art, that kind of stuff. They invited me to show my first piece at their monthly open house, and I fell in love with the warehouse gallery experience, the people, and the unpretentious, celebratory vibe of the event. I joined them soon after, wound up spending every free minute there. I explored different media and became enamored with mixed media and watercolor. I was thriving. With the support of my wife, I quit my crappy job on The Strip and went back to school for graphic design. I felt like I’d finally found something that would fulfill me.

Unfortunately, the collective died in a pretty glorious fashion shortly after that. We were evicted by surprise one morning, and immediately had to move our equipment and supplies into storage units. The truth came out when we lost multiple storage units filled with thousands of dollars in art and equipment when the storage company seized the contents for non-payment. The scumbag in charge of gallery finances has been pocketing gallery finances for months. It was devastating and took a long time to get over. Finding my feet again as a solo artist in the local art community after having (who I thought were) my ride-or-dies proved pretty difficult for me. The Armory had been my life. I’d lost a core group of friends, my community connections, and entire source of income I kinda dropped off the radar.

I used to produce a lot more fun, light-hearted pieces; lots of fun pop culture stencil art and a popular series of “Nerdy Birdies”, which were adorable little watercolor birds painted as famous people and fictional characters. The 2016 election was a watershed moment in my art. I’ve always been a politically active person, and the election of a fascist sex predator as president was devastating. That was definitely a turning point in my style. My pieces started bigger. Angier. More politically oriented and definitive point of view. It was cathartic to pour all that rage into pasting the horrors of the day’s news onto canvas, then obliterate them into the background with color washes, scrubs of paint, and layers of more pleasing textured papers. My style has settled into a bit of an inbetween, but I finally gave myself permission to create art solely for myself without worrying about whether or not anyone would buy it. That was a turning point in my relationship to my art.

Despite the daily dumpster fires of news, life still grinds on. Eventually, I got a full-time graphic design job that I thought might be my entry to professional digital art… I wound up hating it intensely. It was a far cry from the band logos and album covers I’d been doing. While it was in my digital wheelhouse, it turns out that one uncreative soul-sucking corporate gig is as bad as another, regardless of industry. When I left the company after 2 years, graphic design had left a bad taste in my mouth and I basically didn’t even touch my computer for close to 18 months. I was depressed. I was anxious. I felt paralyzed by past and potential future failures. I’d lost a lot of the joy I found in visual art but was finding my way back by diving into learning other creative pursuits like home brewing, quilting, making home décor, and permaculture gardening. I used the flowers and plants from my garden to make my own natural fabric dyes and discovered eco-printing, a technique that allows you create gorgeous abstract patterns on fabric and paper using fresh and dried botanicals. I loved it all. I had new grand plans to monetize every obsession and I didn’t follow through on a single one.

Last year, I was finally diagnosed with ADHD and it has been quite literally life changing. Once I learned what the disorder actually entails, so many pieces of my life fell into place. School. Work. Issues with impulse control. My eclectic interests and talents. My inability to follow through on projects and ideas, all of it. They’re all textbook ADHD behaviors. Starting treatment was really the start of my return to professional creativity. I became more confident that I could re-open my Etsy shop, trusting that there is a market for people whose tastes are as diverse as mine. I set aside the idea that I had to conform to a single, marketable product, theme, or style. That’s just NOT who I am, either as a person or as an artist. I re-branded completely, crossed my fingers, and relaunched my online store as The Eclectic Domestic. Turns out the world is full of people who appreciate a weird mix of unexpected, esoteric, and off-beat merchandise, and that’s kinda my sweet spot. In the end, my ADHD has defined my style. I design shirts when I feel like designing shirts. When I get bored of design, I throw myself into something completely different like making hand-dipped candles, oils and incense. Or ceramics. Or literally anything else that catches my eye. I now carry over 200 items and my business is growing every day. It’s awesome.

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?

I think many people struggle to understand that for some, it is NECESSARY to enjoy what you’re doing in order to succeed. Many people go years in crappy jobs they hate, and just shrug and say “The pay and benefits are great though”. That is just not the case for some of us. For some, it can literally be life-destroying. It doesn’t mean we’re lazy or that we have no work ethic. It doesn’t mean that we think we’re somehow above normal jobs because we’re special artistic butterflies that don’t have to put in “real” work. It means we would rather work our asses off to make money for ourselves, not for someone else. It means that we have our own point of view to offer, not just advancing someone else’s agenda and profits. It means we value our time and our mental health when employers don’t, and think that you should too.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The free expression of authenticity. I’ve never been especially good at assimilating into corporate culture and never been especially interested in trying (much to the the annoyance of corporations I’ve worked for). I’m kind of a sarcastic smart ass, and have no patience for people that try to use money to get what they want. Apparently these are liabilities in a corporate environment and are frowned upon…) As an artist and independent business owner, the only person I’m responsible for representing is myself. I don’t have to hide my tattoos or, even worse, wear a uniform. The older I get, the less time I have for people’s opinion of me. I’m 100% done pretending to be someone I’m not in order to make money for somebody else. If you see me wearing an aggressively queer or pro-choice shirt and decide that makes my company unworthy of your money, I can guarantee I won’t lose sleep over it. Profits are important, but not at the expense of pretending to be someone I’m not.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.TheEclecticDomestic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eclecticallydomestic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEclecticDomestic/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/EclecticsByCJ
• Other: Pinterest: https://twitter.com/EclecticsByCJ