Although the amount in debt seems relatively small, my annual income as a part-time faculty doesn't allow me to pay any of it off; it just continues to accumulate. It all started while getting my Bachelor's degree, continuing to my Master's and beyond. I worked while in school to keep my debt as low as possible and feel I did succeed in that. Since working as a part-time faculty, my expenses do usually exceed being able to pay the debt off and I'm also constantly trying to find other jobs to make the difference.
I work as a part-time faculty at HCC, which alone doenst really pay for much, given the limit of hours an adjunct is allowed to teach at a given semester. So I'm in constant search for other part-time jobs to pay my bills and to keep my schedule flexible enough to continue making work. At any given time, I am juggling between 3-5 diffrent jobs that include my art practice. As of right now, I try to keep jobs that deal with art practices of some form. But I question my realtion to that all the time. It would be much easier to make a living in a full time job of any other kind. Art jobs are rare and hard to get.
My debt certainly affects my practice. Maybe not in an obvious way, but it puts a strain financially on the materials I can use and places a huge strain on me mentally. I am always worrying on how I can continue to make a living or better my living. I did not go into an art practice with naive notions of fame. I just want to make a decent living from one job and my artistic practice without me having to expand myself into 4 different people. I'm always just having to make the situation work. Sometimes it works fine, but it mostly doesn't, and I'm left feeling that if I let one thing go, everything will fall apart.
