If You Don't Have to Work, Should You?

Advice column #37

Barbara Kruger Display at Area Nightclub (Photo by Nick Elgar/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

I dropped out of college to pursue a self-taught art education.

It's been a year, and I haven't had any financial success, but I'm the happiest I've ever been in life. I get a lot of flak for the decision I made, but my mom's fine with housing me and I apply myself to my work, so I don't really understand people's problem with my lifestyle. Thoughts?

Unless you’re asking for their time or money in a way that feels unfair (there are myriad permutations of this, so use your best judgment here), the people who have a problem with you are just using you as a canvas to work out some other frustration. It’s about you, but it’s not really about you.

I obviously can’t tell you with any measure of certainty whether you’re doing something that’s authentically annoying, because I’m not sure how you’re communicating your lifestyle to other people. I’ll give you benefit of the doubt though and assume that it’s one of these things where if it comes up it comes up, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. It is what it is, and you’re neither flaunting it nor minimizing it, just being honest.