What does it actually take to walk away from a career that pays well but costs you almost everything?

This week we're joined in the studio by Bill Bate, a long-time listener who has quietly lived one of the more interesting creative detours we've heard in a while. Twenty years in the fly-in, fly-out oil and gas industry. A slow-burning disquiet. And on the other side of all of it: a photography degree, a music festival in regional Victoria, and a brass fountain pen he's carried every day since 2010.

We talk about what it costs to stay too long in the wrong life, how creative people find each other and why Bill thought the only real solution to missing a creative community was to go and build one himself.

You might want to listen if:

• You've spent years doing work that pays but doesn't quite fit and you want to get out, like yesterday

• You've been thinking about starting something - a group, an event, a regular gathering and you feel time is closing in

• You're at the stage of life where you've stopped trying to name what you are and you just want to live creatively

Find Bill at these links:

Clear Air Creative Instagram

Clear Air Creative Website

Bill on Instagram

Pain In The Arts is a weekly podcast about the reality of creative life. Hosted by Breallyn and Lyndon Wesley. One of them never knows the topic until recording begins.

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Theme music by Lyndon Wesley

Produced on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country.

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