[ford_o]

How can you burn out by painting?

[lindseymysse]

I'm mostly joking, but painting is difficult mental labor. It requires an enormous amount of mental and physical control.

Most people when seeing my paintings are quite surprised to find out I rarely sell them. It's because as soon as I try to professionalize that part of my career I have to change what I'm doing to fit a market, and I hate everyone else's taste but my own.

P.S. some of my paintings can be found at https://lnsy.studio, but mostly I write software for organizations that work on dealing with the climate crisis.

[tonyedgecombe]

Money seems to remove the joy from most activities. This is at the root of most of the complaints in this thread.

[thecupisblue]

Love your style, got a new subscriber!

[metagame]

Painting is serious labor as much as anything else, and requires skills and effort comparable to and sometimes exceeding programming.

[agumonkey]

But efforts are good. Its fuzzy chaos that hurts in computing. Absurd meetings, changing infrastructure, colleague turn over and politics.

I'd assume painting is stable and bs free.

Struggling to achieve results can still hurt though.

[hsn915]

Programmers who escape programming are sort of yearning for the physical labor and physical effort and physical tirdeness that comes with it. We're kind of designed for that sort of work.

People who enjoy programming and long stretches of mental exercise are rare, and have been rare throughout history.

[coldcode]

I retired this year after 4 decades of writing code; now I write code to make art (in addition to other digital painting and effects). The code is actually much harder than anything I ever did before since I don't use other people's tools but make my own, but way more fun since its what I want to do, not what someone else wants. Programming without meetings or JIRA or stupid processes or politics or impossible deadlines/requirements or anything is so much better. Becoming successful as an artist is even harder than programming, that's still WIP.

[addandsubtract]

Are we talking about creative canvas painting or home decoration painting?

[KingMachiavelli]

Probably not art painting but rather interior paining and/or exterior staining. It is lot of physical work and the long term health outcomes (unless you are religious about wearing a respirator) aren't great.

[thejohnconway]

Speaking as a professional artist, art can burn you out just as surely as programming can. Just try painting six novel paintings a month for a couple of years.