Welcome back to It Pays the Bills! This will be our last episode, and I want to thank all of our listeners and readers that have followed along this podcast’s journey.
All good things must come to an end, and while my curiosity about what creatives are doing to survive remains strong, the reality of running a regular podcast alongside my own creative pursuits and full-time work is too much at the moment. Maybe there will be a moment in the future when I’ll start It Pays the Bills up again, but, for now, it’s time to say goodbye.
I’d like to take a moment to say a few thank yous:
Carys Wynn, who has always been a sounding board on any mad project idea I have, and also has always let me use her Canva. She also designed the logo for the podcast!
Marissa Landy, for composing our theme tune.
All of my exceptional and fascinating interviewees.
For our last episode, I thought I’d circle back to the start: I’ve asked my very first guest, Carys Wynn, to interview me. Hopefully I have some interesting things to say! If you want to follow along with what I’m doing next, come join me at General Activity.
In the condensed transcript below, I’ve italicized Carys’s questions and comments. Enjoy!
Welcome to your own podcast. First of all, can you sort of tell us like why we switched the format today?
Yeah, so we're going completely rogue. We're doing something completely different because this is our last episode. It's all coming to an end. And so as a favor, I asked you to interview me because I feel like I have some things to say about day jobs, about this project and really just for a bit of fun.
Well, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself first?
Well, my name's Cristina. I'm an actor living in London, originally from California. I have had a bunch of day jobs. Most of them have been office-based, but we'll get into that, of course. And I'm the host of It Pays the Bills.
What is your creative pursuit?
I'm an actor, I trained in musical theatre and in drama as well. So actor, singer, strong mover. I'm a writer. And for fun I do kind of other creative artsy bits. I’ve gotten very into mosaics recently for example. I've just learned how to grout, so it's all very exciting.
So what kind of acting stuff would be the ultimate for you?
That's a good question. I think that's really changed over the years. It used to be just straight musical theatre for sure. Although I always had a love for straight plays, straight theatre.
I think with acting, the thing that I'm really interested in is I have such a curiosity about how other people live. And I think what always drew me to acting in the first place is the idea that you can live many lives. So anything that allows me to explore kind of outside of myself, my own experience, I guess is what I'm interested in.
What is your current day job?
My current day job is I'm a technical writer for a tech startup. What that means essentially is that I write the Help Center articles.
How long have you been doing that?
This job I've been in just under a year. Technical writing, I started January 2022-ish when I went freelance.
So my background was in marketing professionally. And when I went freelance, I kind of knew I wanted to switch from the kinds of roles that I was doing. And I had a friend reach out to me who worked for a tech company. He works still in tech, but he worked at a specific company. And he said, I think I have a freelance role for you. It's a technical writing role for you. I know you've never done it before, but I think I could train you in that. You could learn how to do it. And so he gave me my first technical writing job for a med tech company. And then I just, those were the kind of roles I took from there.
How do you find out that you can do that kind of job?
Well, I was very lucky in the sense that both my parents are technical writers. And so actually not going into technical writing in the first place was a bit of, it wasn't a rebellion. I was never planning on going into tech, really. But I kind of, I grew up around it and I grew up around this kind of thinking, I think.
So in the course of my marketing jobs, I was always writing a lot. So I knew I could write and I knew I could write professionally, well. And then technical writing is just writing for another audience and writing different content. So I was pretty confident I could do that.
And were you always a freelancer or did you used to sort of have the day-to-day grind?
So when I graduated from my undergrad, I went into a full-time job as a marketing executive for a small startup, like a tiny startup. And I was in that job and then I left to go to Mountview. And then I went back to that job after Mountview, initially part-time. And then when COVID hit, I went back full-time. And then I was in that job until I went freelance.
Was it scary going freelance?
Yeah, it was terrifying. But I needed a change. And I was thinking about going freelance as my friend Eric offered me an interview for that job, basically. And so he didn't hire me, to be clear. He had the role available and somebody else hired me. But he did give me the introduction, which was super, super helpful.
And yeah, it was absolutely terrifying, but it coincided really well. And I did that for two years until the market changed.
And what's the best thing about being freelance?
The flexibility in the hours, for sure. I worked a lot those two years, but I was able to do them completely on my own terms. And that was that kind of freedom you don't get anywhere else.
The caveat to that is that I was always working. I think I took maybe a week off for Christmas, but other than that, I was working pretty much every day of the year, at least six days a week.
And I traveled a lot, but I worked when I traveled. I didn't really have a holiday or a break and the only reason I had that time off at Christmas is because everybody else was taking time off over Christmas. So that that was tough and I didn't expect that when I first went into freelancing.
I think it's so easy to glamorize it, and I know I looked at you thinking, God, she is traveling all over the world. The fact that she can just keep working a few hours here and there, and then get to go to the pool.
The thing is because you're freelance you know that you can kind of be let go at any minute. So not only are you always working - you’re always trying to keep your clients happy because you don't want them to let you go for any reason or end your contract early. Or you want to renew your contract. And then you're always looking for new work. I spent those two years constantly looking for new work whether I had work going or not. So it's really exhausting and I can see how a lot of people who are freelance burn out really easily, because you can always be doing more.
And what would be like the biggest negative [of freelancing]?
There's no safety net, basically, unless you have your own savings. And candidly, when I got let go from my freelancing jobs, I was about to get married and all of those bills were coming in. Our landlord at the time decided to sell our flat and kicked us out the month we got married. And I had no income coming in.
It was extraordinary bad luck and I was extraordinarily lucky, extraordinarily lucky to be in a position where we were able to like call upon friends and family for help.
But basically from one month to the next, my life completely changed in that way. It can be so unstable.
So, we've talked about your current job. Let's talk about your previous jobs.
So, my first job ever, I was a lifeguard. Yeah, for a summer camp.
You love the pool. That makes sense.
I do love the pool. I love to swim. And my parents basically, when I hit about 15, said, okay, you have to go get a job. I wasn't allowed to work during the school year, but I had to work over the summers. And then whatever money I made over the summer had to pay for whatever I wanted to do during the school year. So if I wanted to go out to the movie with my friends or buy me clothes or whatever, that had to come from the money I made over the summer.
And so, yeah, I was a lifeguard, so I got my lifeguard certification. It was also my mom's idea. It was a good idea, because at the summer camp, the lifeguards got paid more than the camp counselors. So she was really looking out for me there and she knew I could swim and all that kind of stuff. And I really did enjoy it.
So I was a swim instructor for like the first three hours of the afternoon. And then I was a lifeguard for the rest of the day. And I taught kids from four to the age of 11. So all different levels.
Very cute.
Yeah, really cute. The little kindergartners, the tiny ones as well. You've got the spectrum of the children who hated water. They were afraid to get in. And the ones that they think they can swim and they can go into the deep end. So on the one hand, I'm trying to drag these kids in. On the other, I'm trying to fish a kid back from trying to swim past me into the deep end. So yeah, it was really good fun.
But like with the older kids, we would like teach them. We would really work on improving their form.
So that was between 15, 16, 17. That was my job over the summers.
And then after that, after my first year of university, I came back and I worked for the school that I went to over the summer in their Office of Communications as a marketing intern.
So you started young.
Yeah. We were very, I mean, I grew up in an area that was very kind of work focused, in a professional sense. And if you weren’t, if you didn't have a job over the summer, like I did, you were expected to do an internship, like when you were in high school. Like if you wanted to be a doctor, you were expected to do something medical or like all these kind of things. And I was very clear that I was always going into the theater so none of that applied to me.
So yeah, so those were my first kind of jobs.
And then how I ended up in London is when I was in university, I went to a university that had a program that essentially that you take a semester off of school up to three times and go do a six month internship somewhere. So the first time I did that I went to New York City and I worked for a company in their advertising department. And it was a baptism of fire. I learned a lot.
I mean, it was the first time i've ever been laid off as well. Because I was originally hired to work at a startup within this larger company and within two weeks of me being there they folded the startup and everybody got laid off. But because i had a contract they had an agreement with the school they had to put me somewhere else. So I ended up not even doing the job that I signed up to. And yeah, it was my first layoff at 20 years old.
That's really good work experience because that's real as hell.
And what luck as well, because it was - I mean, it felt really scary and horrible at the time, of course, but it was relatively low stakes, right? I was still in university and all that kind of stuff.
So I did that, went back to Boston, which is where I did my undergrad. And then the next two work experiences that I did, the next two internships I did were in London. So that's how I ended up here. And I worked for a small bank as their marketing intern.
So I did that twice and I had a really good experience with them. And my boss in particular is one of the best bosses I've ever had. And I learned a ton from her.
And then went back to Boston, finished my degree. And then moved back to London straight away, actually.
What was the pull with London?
Well, it was either going to be London or New York. And I just loved London so much when I was here. And I knew that I wanted to build a life here.
And I think the other thing really was that as somebody interested in the theatre, I just felt like London was so much more… I don't want to say more creative than New York, but I felt like it had conditions that were more conducive to creativity. In the sense that it had socialized health care.
You don't have to get a job that ties you to medical insurance, for example, if you get hit by a bus. There's enough of a social safety net, but it is still difficult here. And I've been here ever since.
So then I worked that small tech startup job. Until I was freelance, then I was freelance, and then now I'm in my current job.
Any favorites?
I did love the lifeguarding. I had to stop in the end, actually, because my eyesight was getting so bad, and obviously they don't let you wear your glasses as a lifeguard. And it just got too stressful because I started to realize how much I couldn't see.
There was some of my freelance work that I really loved as well, that I thought was interesting. And I learned a lot and I loved the people I was working with.
It makes such a big difference and I think being freelance is such a compliment as well, like they've chosen you out of everyone.
And I think as well like they're looking for somebody to come in and do that job as unobtrusively as possible. They don't want to spend a lot of time training people. Usually a freelancer is hired to fill a gap in work more than to be somebody like consistent. I mean, obviously there are exceptions to that but to know that I could go in and kind of do that and that I was trusted to pick up whatever they were going to throw at me. And they both gave me actually really nice references afterwards as well.
What is the worst thing that's ever happened to you at work?
Oh, gosh, the worst. There's a story I can't tell, actually. I'll tell you that one later.
I think I've been really lucky. Probably the worst thing that's happened to me is I've been in situations where people just didn't treat me very well. I won't even go into a story because there's no story to tell. It's quite dull. But it's just when you're taken advantage of or you're not respected or just these kind of comments are made to you.
And that's the kind of place where you really struggle to maintain your own confidence in your work. And like, I'm quite a hard worker. I'm not the best at everything, but I will give everything a good wally. I've been in places that really shattered my confidence. And yeah, so I would say that's probably the worst. Well, second worst other than the thing that I can't say.
How does your current day job feed into your creative pursuit?
I think it would be very easy to say that it doesn't because it really doesn't.
I mean, how does it oppose it?
Well, it doesn't really oppose it either. They just live in completely different worlds. But I do think there is something in that a lot of what I do as a technical writer, a lot of what I do obviously is just sit and write. And so, that sounds quite solitary and quite different from acting, but also I'm working with a lot of people in different teams. I'm synthesizing and learning and regurgitating a lot of new information. And to be honest, the thing that takes most work in my job is to get people to respond to me in a timely manner sometimes. It's a constant practice in working with other people, learning a lot of new information. And those are skills that you use in theater as well. You have to be able to express yourself clearly and learn new things very quickly.
So, they're very different worlds. But actually, when I decided to do a theater degree, my parents were very supportive. And part of the reason they were supportive is because they had a really good understanding of actually how all of these skills could cross over into something like tech. They didn't necessarily want me to go into tech, but they had a good understanding of how those skills could be used because they are quite creative people themselves.
They don't go together, but they don't, they're not at odds with each other. Except obviously the hours. And you can't get around that. That's true of every nine to five.
Do you have any advice for anyone looking to pursue a creative career?
My advice, if I could distill it, the best advice I've heard, I would say is to just do it. And like, this is something that I've struggled to follow myself because I'm - you wouldn't be able to tell, but by nature I'm quite shy. And so what I mean by that is, is put yourself out there and do it consistently, which is something, again, I'm very bad at doing and I genuinely do struggle with.
But if you have something that you want to be doing, the only way to get better is not only just to physically do it yourself. Like say you want to be better at piano, practice your piano, obviously, but go out and perform it. Just consistently put it out there and do it. If you're making art and you want to share it you have to actually share it. Same goes for theater, same goes for any idea.
Just do it. There’s a million reasons not to do it, but if you if you want to pursue a creative career - it’s something I'm still learning to do.
It's sort of stopping from asking permission all the time. Just because someone hasn't hired you to be an actor doesn't mean you're not an actor.
I just want to go back and like talk about - so, obviously you've interviewed - how many people do you think you've interviewed by now? Do you have any, like, best moments you want to talk about?
Yeah, there's a few. I mean, because I was learning how to do this along the way, there were so many funny moments where, I mean, genuinely I had no idea what it took to run a podcast or how to do any of this.
I always really remember fondly our interview where I think we couldn't get something to work and we just were laughing and my questions weren't quite right because I was still workshopping at all and we were just on my couch in my old flat just, dying of laughter.
It was the first question, which I thought, like, it scared me because I didn't understand what you meant. And now that I've listened to your podcast, not with me in it, I'm like, I get it now.
Well, to be fair, I got so many complaints about that question, I changed it. So it was good feedback. Yours was creative practice. Because the idea, I mean, I had a thinking around it, which was that I was worried that creative pursuit would limit people to what they think they can monetize.
And what I was interested in and still am interested in is how all the ways that people are creative and the ways that they want to pursue a career and maybe not as well.
Like for example, I'm definite that I would like to pursue acting as a career. My mosaics may never see the light of day for money. Do you know what I mean? There is a difference, but I encapsulate that all into one creative practice. So that's what I was trying to do, but I think that didn't read. It made sense in my mind, but I think in nobody else's.
Are there any jobs that you heard about that you thought, I'd love to do that?
I've never worked in a cafe, for example. I'd actually love to be a barista or actually work in a pub. George Lester's job, he was an editor. I think that would be quite interesting and not a world away from what I do. Also, he writes books, so that's also really cool, and I'd also love to do that.
I thought Steph's.
Steph's was amazing. Yes, thank you for reminding me. That was so good. Yeah, it would have to be that one. No offense to everyone else. You have great jobs, but that's really cool.
What is your creative dream?
I'd love to make the majority of my money from creative pursuits.
And then kind of, if that's the big circle, like the big picture, like dialing down into that, I'd love to work relatively consistently on stage.
I know that sounds very vague, but I think now having done this and pursued this career for this amount of years, I think my definition of success, first of all, is very different from what it used to be. My requirements for life and what I want for life is way bigger than it used to be as well. And I don't mean like more expensive. I mean like, you know, I also want to have a nice home with my partner. I also want to be able to visit my family. You know, I have family everywhere but here essentially. And so, you know, that takes time and money and flexibility.
So, you know, kind of working within those goals, I'd love to make, the majority of my money creatively so I could kind of be self-sustaining and do, put more time into the work that interests me. And then as a subset of that, I would love to work on stage, yeah, consistently.
What is your dream day job?
Listeners may already know this and I have actually applied for it but my dream job would be to be a question setter on University Challenge. Absolutely my dream. I’m such a nerd. I love pub quizzes, I love University Challenge.
But yeah, fingers crossed. I have not heard. I don't really expect to, but at least I've put my, I've showed up, and we'll see.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: I unfortunately didn’t get an interview - but hopefully I’ll get the chance to apply again in the future!]
You've just done it.
I've just done it.
And then other than that, maybe I'd like to like own a small cafe or something.
That'd be super cute. Any sort of theme?
Yeah. What I'm really interested in is like, you know how after, I'm thinking after the First World War, I'm thinking specifically because I just read A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, and it's about that time in the early 20s where like he's there, and like F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote Great Gatsby is there. Gertrude Stein is there. So there was this like, there's a circle of intellectuals and artists and things, and they were all just get together, and they were all doing their own things, and they were kind of, you know, starving artists, but they were kind of making the most of it.
And so my idea for a cafe would be to make a place that would bring people together like that who are doing those kind of things. So I don't know what that would mean past it being a cafe that is known for artsy stuff, but like having, a space to perform, maybe having this kind of rehearsal space, having gallery space, having studio space, Like being the kind of place that brings people together that people want to meet at to create that kind of community.
That being said, having been slightly into business ourselves, how feasible are these things? How can you keep them running in London? That's an entirely different question.
It sounds lovely, doesn't it?
Because I wanted to start a community similar to the one that I just described to you with cafe, kind of more digitally. Because when I was at the end of my time being freelance and I was looking for a job - and it took me six months to find a job which in today's market was actually not that bad - but you know, I had no real source of income. So it was really stressful. And I burned through my savings in those six months. I was asking all of my friends, “What do you do?” In the hopes that I could also do what they did, and see if it would work for me and kind of see what those barriers to entry were.
And then I thought to myself, well, I am obviously not the only person who's been in this situation or who's looking for the next thing or who hates their current day job and wants to do something else, but can't just not work. So I started asking my friends and I just thought, I wish there was something I could listen to that would give me the answers that I'm looking for. And then I was like, well, great, I'll do it myself.
And also, I guess my hopes for it at the time were that it would be somewhere where people would kind of organically come to it and say, oh, that was a great idea and that really helped me. Or, oh, I have this idea. I don't know if many people have heard of this or if they know about how to do this or that. And that it could be that kind of thing of people really, of artists really supporting each other.
And I know there's podcasts that are kind of similar to this, have a similar tenor. But I think what I really wanted to focus on was not just actors. Because I think there's so much variety in the creative life. And I think so many people are multi-hyphenates across the creative sphere as well. And I was really interested in that.
And I was also really interested in the idea of you don't have to starve to be an artist you don't have to be working a minimum wage job. So how are people getting by? How are people finding that stability for themselves, if that's what they want? And you know I would have loved to interview people with families, for example, that they're raising and see how they're doing it.
So that was the initial idea. And I think it still could be that and I hope people have gotten something out of it. But I think also it's just so hard to find an audience. It can be very difficult to find your audience in a very crowded market.
What have you learned about yourself during this process?
I've learned that I can finish a project. So that's a big one. I was really worried about my own ability to commit. And I was pretty consistent with posting as well, which I only slipped up actually once at the very end. So that was pretty, I impressed myself.
I've learned that I can ask strangers to record, even though I still hate it. It’s still very scary to me or even people that I kind of know as an acquaintance or even friends sometimes.
And finally, why are you closing the podcast?
It's too much to do, honestly. I do this entirely on my own, I schedule people, I record them, I edit them. I go into your [Carys’s] Canva to make my social media posts and then I post the social media.
But the fact is that it's just too much work. I could do it, but to be honest, I have other projects I wanna focus more on. The mosaics. And just kind of other art, you know, I want to get back more into writing.
But the fact is that I have a full time job that is wonderful where I'm treated very well, but it is not flexible. And I have a life and I'd like to generally look after myself as well. So, yeah, it's just become too much.
I didn't want to quit for no reason. I was very much raised that you don't quit things, except for judo, which I was allowed to quit. So I really thought to myself, what are the conditions in which you would continue doing this no problem? Because I do still find it interesting. If other people took care of the scheduling, the editing and the social media, I would do it no problem. Or even honestly, just the scheduling, which is the thing that is the most difficult. If I had somebody booking for me, basically, I'd continue to do it.
But I do this for free. I do this for fun. And there's only so much steam you can give your own project when you have limited time.
What's next for Cristina?
Well, mosaics, that's for one. It's going to be a warm summer, so you'll find me in lido a lot. So back to my lifeguarding roots.
I'm writing a lot. That's what I'm interested in. I've started as well a new Substack [EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out General Activity here!] to kind of keep myself accountable to my own creative practice.
And yeah, I mean, I'd love to bring back the podcast at one point, maybe. I think it's very much a sabbatical, maybe. And then we'll see if that's a sabbatical forever or not.
Amazing. Well, thank you for doing this today.
Thank you for interviewing me.
My pleasure. And it's lovely to hear your perspective on all the questions you've been asking.
I'm so glad. I hope somebody finds it interesting.
Honestly, and congratulations on starting and doing a podcast. I'm very proud of you.
Thank you. This is a how to start and finish a podcast!
Share this post