I get asked a lot of questions about my artwork and about my career change and, as I was answering some of them, I wondered if there were more people out there who hadn’t asked the question, but might benefit from the answer. So I started this blog post series to share my answers to the questions I get asked most often.
So Ask Me Anything. What do you want to know? Photoshop tips? Greetings Card Vendors? How to get started as a professional artist? Camera Equipment? Inspiration? even *whispers* m-o-n-e-y? Post your questions on my Facebook Page or send me an email if you’re shy xx
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“When you changed careers, how did you figure out that photography was your calling?”
So, first a bit of background……When I quit my job in 2010 I was stockbroker in the City of London. I had been in that career for almost eight years and I was a Vice President, so I had been reasonably successful.
The problem was that I had been so focused on getting to a certain level that I didn’t stop to think about whether it was what I actually wanted. And when I got promoted, I was thinking “Ok…..now what???”
Well, it turns out that the answer to that question was “Repeat for another 30 to 40 years.” And when that thought feels like staring into the abyss with your life stretching before you in cubicle hell, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you’re in the wrong job.
When I started to tell people that I was thinking of moving on, many of them were shocked. “But you’ve worked so hard for this. How can you give up now? Can’t you just hang on a while longer and enjoy some of the rewards?”
In actual fact, I did hang on for another two years, though it was more as a result of crippling indecision than a considered decision to save up some funds for what came next. And, by the way, I had absolutely no idea what came next.
I didn’t even know where to start looking. I had no idea about how to go about changing career, or even what I would do if I did.
So, I began as most people do. I started looking at my existing skills and wondering how I could use them to make a living.
This is a totally arse first way of looking at things, by the way, but it somehow seemed logical at the time.
After months of aimlessly trying to seek out new opportunities, taking courses in wedding photography and seriously considering pet sitting, (no, really) I was just as lost as ever.
I was desperate and willing to try anything (except leaving, obviously) so I got myself a life coach.
I was incredibly resistant to the process at first, but I began to see that, if this process could help me find something I loved doing, something that I’d be happy to repeat for another 30 to 40 years, it was worth every minute and every penny spent on it.
I’d spent more on a holiday. Hell, I’d probably spent more on shoes.
Did coaching solve my problems and send me off into the world to a new and fulfilled life? Well, yes and no. Twelve months of deep work (and it was deep work – many a tear was shed) and I had grown enough to be able to realise that attempting to direct your life in such a terrified, grabby way is not the way to find that thing that is in harmony with your life’s purpose.
Sometimes you have to realise that you’re in a valley and the fact that you can’t see past the next hill doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there, or indeed that what’s there isn’t much better. Are you going to stay stuck and wonder what else there is, or are you going to climb the hill and see what’s on the other side?
For me, I realised that while working in the City of London, I would never figure out what I really wanted to do. So….eventually….I quit. With no job to go to and not even a vague idea of what the next job might be.
I’m not the kind of girl who likes to jump without a parachute so I had some activities planned. I was going to spend 18 months enjoying the things that really made me feel alive and see what happened.
I trained as a Vinyasa Flow yoga teacher in Bali, I went on writing retreats, I fasted in Thailand. And I took a year long course in Photography at the London College of Communication.
And, in that year, something shifted in me.
So that, by the time I reached Photography (or maybe by the time I was brave enough to admit that I wanted it) I was ready to be inspired.
At Art School I had the time and the space to explore my imagination and I couldn’t get enough. I was awake all night learning new ways to create images in Photoshop. I spent hours pouring over illustration books in the library.
I had found something that engaged me enough to not make me feel sick when I thought of doing it for the next 30 to 40 years.
And where I am now, is just a matter of carrying on doing it. But it’s not the end. It’s not like I got there and now I can just hang out. The world is still stretching out before me and there are new hills to climb.
If I had any advice to offer on finding out what comes next, it would be this.
If you know you’re not currently doing what you really want to do but you have no idea what that is and no amount of brain racking is helping, don’t be hard on yourself. Don’t allow it to lead you to believe that you have no interests, or you don’t really want to be doing anything or that you’re a lazy person.
Maybe it’s just that your perspective needs shifting. You need to get to higher ground before you can see the world unfold in front of you. When you can’t see what’s around the next bend, surely the next logical thing to do is to go to the bend and look around it.
It’s not comfortable and it’s certainly not easy, but it works. Take the next logical step. And then the next one…and then the next one.
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**** N.B – My life and experience is different to yours in many ways. But it’s similar in the ways that matter. You’ve got things to offer I don’t have and I have things you don’t have.
Maybe you have a job that lets you work remotely. Maybe you have a partner who can help to financially support you. Maybe you already have some training in the thing you think you want to do.
I didn’t have any of those things.
Use the experiences in my life that relate to your own life. Take anything you can learn from and leave the rest. Your situation is different to mine – I get it. But if I can do this, so can you.