Last month, I applied for my $90,000 dream job. I was called in for an interview, and received an offer.

It was a full-time position in the area of my passion. I’d landed a permanent contract with a stable employer (and an excessively generous amount of superannuation to top it off).

By the end of the week, I’d turned it down.

Working in the arts industry is anxiety inducing, and conditions are unstable. It’s particularly challenging when you’re a freelancer who is responsible for putting food on your table. You are accountable to no one except your next client – and fingers crossed they’ll need you that week, or you might not make rent.

Many of us who work in the arts also contribute our time in a volunteer capacity, because our work is so intertwined with our passions and the projects we enjoy creating. My passion project takes up a substantial portion of my working week. I receive no hourly rate, no annual salary, no operational funding. I don’t break even, or earn enough to cover the time I’ve poured into it. This is where my freelance arts work comes in – and luckily, I’ve made it so far, and it’s something I am extraordinarily happy to call my career.

My career does sustain me, yet like most freelancers I share a fear of tomorrow: I’m so busy today that I feel confident and successful. But when I wrap up this gig, will another one be just around the corner – or will I have to struggle for a while?

A lot can be said of the freelance arts life: do your own thing in your own time. Take part in fulfilling projects. Build yourself a portfolio of creative work you will be proud to put your name to. Eventually, you’ll have enough happening to feel comfortable. 

But the fear of tomorrow? That never goes away.

That’s why last month, I applied for a dream job in an institution outside of but adjacent to the arts. An institution I believe in, and one that would bring me joy to call my employer.

When I received an interview, I was overjoyed but afraid. As a sole trader, I have no employer – so how do I prove I can do the work? The panel was warm and approachable, so I had no trouble expressing myself and even found it enjoyable to chat with them. Gone were those typical job interview nerves.

Within 48 hours, I was offered the job.

Clash of culture

This is where things took a turn. It has nothing to do with the work or panel – and everything to do with rigid workplace culture.

In my cover letter, I had expressed my number one value as an employee: remote work flexibility.

With a ‘nothing-to-lose’ approach, I specified my need to work remotely from my home office – a process and flow I’ve fine-tuned over the past decade, and one that achieves maximum productivity. It also allows me and my remote-worker partner, who also suffers chronic illness, to take control over our mental and physical health.

But employment goes both ways, so I wrapped up my cover letter by telling the employer that they should call me only if this sounded like a good fit for them.

They did call – and I was thrilled. A dream job with great pay and the ability to work from home? Yes!

It sounded too good to be true. I wanted to make sure they really had read my cover letter. They had! And was it really OK to work remotely? No, it wasn’t.

This was a desk-based job. It did not serve customers or audiences in person. Projects would be fulfilled independently by the worker, on a computer. Even my interview was conducted via Zoom. Yet, remote work wasn’t an option.

When negotiating in-office hours, there would be no flexibility here either – no ability to start the day at 9.30am instead of 9am. As a woman who experiences intense hormonal symptoms on many mornings of the month, this is a small accommodation to ask for. 

Health should be a basic right. No woman should need to worry about how to begin explaining her body to a future (male) employer, just so she can beg him to meet her halfway. That was a boundary I wasn’t willing to cross.

I had been candid about my needs from day one. So the biggest red flag arose when I realised they’d understood the only need I had expressed as a potential employee – and called me up anyway. 

They had intentionally ignored and denied my need by dangling secure work in front of a freelancer like a carrot on a stick. 

Should I sacrifice my needs for this employer?

Over the next couple of days, I had butterflies in my stomach. I thought about the fact that I could be letting go of permanent job security – something nobody should ever take for granted, and something rare to achieve in the first place. I was terrified.

Big decision

But those vulnerable few days literally changed my life path. I was able to have meaningful conversations with the people in my life who mean a great deal to me – fellow creatives who work in their own freelance arts careers, and know the anxieties that can arise when we try to maintain steady work in an industry that can collapse at the drop of a hat (or a face mask). 

They talked to me about why they choose not to work nine-to-five jobs, why they choose this life of an arts worker over a high-paying and secure corporate career. Why they admired me for something that I had felt tremendously guilty about – holding onto my own values. Staying true to who I am.

What was I willing to let go of? Why was I so eager to turn my back on my existing creative practice when I had made it this far, even if the future is uncertain, as it always will be?

After a couple of sleepless nights, I called the institution and turned down the job. Our values simply didn’t align.

I was met with the argument that I wasn’t asking for flexibility: my need was one-sided. And perhaps it was, because as workers, we must take care of ourselves first. Our work/life balance, our values, and our physical and mental health must come before anything else. Otherwise, how will we be able to do any work at all?

It wasn’t my first run in with inflexible workplace culture. And this reminded me why I work for myself, as a freelancer on a shoestring income, like so many arts workers. 

Because creative freedom can sometimes mean more than financial stability. 

And without freedom, financial stability is nothing: it unravels the moment we burn out, the moment our values and needs are denied, the moment our work/life balance is taken away. It’s not the worker who misses out – it’s the institution that, perhaps too large for its own good, values corporate box-ticking over the most precious resource of all: creativity.

As I now write – a freelancer paid gig to gig, who sees that rare opportunity for job security fading in the rear-view mirror – I feel an immense sense of calm. 

I am calm knowing I stood up to protect my values. I am calm knowing the artists around me are making a go of it too, doing their very best to thrive in their industry careers. I am calm knowing that tomorrow, I will wake up and start work on my own terms, serving arts organisations who bring me joy and echo my passions.

I am calm enough to live the life I have chosen. For now.

This article was originally published by our friends at ArtsHub Australia.

Due to the personal nature of this story, the writer has chosen to publish under a pseudonym, Lauren Battino.