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Director's Notes: 226 - Creditors
🕑 Added 2023-04-17 15:21:57 +0000 UTCThey don't often tell you this in creative classes, but a huge chunk of being a professional artist is administration. 90% is probably a bit high of a percentage but it sometimes feels like it.
It doesn't matter if you're working full time or just running an etsy shop on the side, you gotta have phone calls, zoom meetings, tax forms, website updates, social media presences, and so on. And it can feel so overwhelming.
So when Station Management was explained away by The University of What It Is last episode, I couldn't help but feel great sympathy for poor Cecil. In my mind he's always just been a pure artist. He writes stories, and he lends his voice to his community. He gets paid. The end.
But it's never the end. A few years ago when Night Vale Presents' business manager left for a bigger, better job, Joseph and I found ourselves neck-deep in bank statements, 1099 forms, writing a want ad, and conducting interviews. It was hella stressful.
We had done all of this for years before having a business manager, but then we got one so we could concentrate more on writing books and failed tv pilots and other podcasts. Finally we found Joella in March 2020. And she's been wonderful.
But there's still emails and Slack and questions about health benefits and admin meetings. And listen, this isn't a complaint. It's just a part of the job, and a reality Cecil Gershwin-Palmer suddenly found himself in.
Thankfully, Joseph and I don't have debts owed to goat-headed creditors, and we've never tried to store 18 cases of room-temperature scallops in the office.
-Jeffrey Cranor
April 15, 2023
Comments
Jeffrey Byrne
If you haven't tried to store 18 cases of room-temperature scallops in the office, have you truly lived?
Christine Havens
I always have to use the admin hemisphere of my brain to remind myself to submit invoices for freelance articles. The artist part of me doesn’t want to worry about getting paid, lol.
Doni Payne
I did not fully realize till just now that Cecil's last name was "Gershwin-Palmer". I thought Gershwin was a middle name. I did think it was odd that the University of What It Is call d him Mr Gershwin Palmer, but I took it as a sort of passive aggressive dismissive way of just not using his first name. Also, totally sympathize with admin work. I worked in IT and there were so many days just spent in meetings instead of working on actual IT stuff.
