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Transitioning into Your Creative Dream Job

Don't be a Quitter!

By Chris Dunmire, CoachingYourCreativity.com

(« Con't)

Kristen Fischer, author of the book, Creatively Self-Employed: How Writers and Artists Deal with Career Ups and Downs related something that made me remember Eliza today. In her "Creative Careers" interview on the Creativity Portal Web site she noted:

I think another issue is that people think you “just quit.” You don’t, in many cases. You have to pay your dues. I worked the night shift at a paper and would drive out to the production plant at midnight every night and sit in a smelly warehouse waiting to make sure the papers printed correctly. It was horrible, but it was a practical way for me to build business on the side. Sometimes you have to take a job you don’t enjoy, or something not in your field, to plan your “escape,” but I think if you do it right, you can make the break into creative self-employment.

Like many creative dream-squashers, my friend Eliza may have thought the only way she could pursue her creative passion in flower arranging was to quit her day job cold turkey and devote all of her energy towards her new business. But as Kristen pointed out, you don’t “just quit.” You transition. And you make that transition by slowly building up your dream job on the side until it gets big enough in your life to turn off the day-job and fully turn on the dream-job. Yes, Eliza could have manifested her creative dream in stages by growing it slowly until it was big enough to take off on its own. The seeds of possibility were there then, just like they are now for many of you hoping to make your own creative dreams come true.

I left the corporation Eliza and I worked at in 2000 and since have lost contact with her. She’d be pleased to know that I still cherish her pen and pencil set, and use it occasionally with gratitude, knowing I AM doing important work. How thankful I am to Eliza for planting the seeds of possibility in me. I’m also certain that she has retired from the company and now has the time to make her creative dreams real. Hopefully, she is tending to her silk flower garden full-time. •

* Not her real name.

© 2007 Chris Dunmire, CoachingYourCreativity.com. All rights reserved. (03/03/07). Please do not duplicate this article elsewhere without my permission.

About the Author
Chris Dunmire is the author of the Dollar Bill Origami Money Plant and driving force behind the popular Creativity Portal Web site. She finds meaning as an artist, humorist, and creativity coach and channels her overactive imagination into multiple containers on display at ChrisDunmire.com.