Do you ever feel like you’re selling your creative soul for a measly paycheck in a “safe” job?

Maybe you never finished writing your book because you just knew you couldn’t pay the bills with it. Or you set aside playing that instrument when it came time to start really making a living. You think you could have gone farther with your photography, but you know that you’d just end up investing way more money on the equipment than you’d ever make from it.

Most of us have a story like this.

After all, art is a lot of work. It requires putting yourself out there and being open to criticism. Why go through all that hassle when (conventional wisdom says) artists are always poor and struggling?

My Unexpected Quest

I thought the same things many years ago, when I started learning music as an adult. I knew in my gut my job wasn’t the best fit, but it was pretty good and I thought it was too late to change careers. I immersed myself in music simply because I loved it. Honestly, I didn’t expect any returns at all and certainly not financial ones.

I’m happy to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Since I took that first step, I’ve successfully started part-time careers in teaching music, writing songs and performing, coaching, and most recently, blogging. I also finally got to the point where the income I generate from these activities could replace my full-time income.

It took time. I made mistakes. I invested a great deal of time and money and wasted some too. But over time the benefits far outweighed the costs, and many opportunities came from sources I never anticipated.

You don’t have to feel trapped. You have many more options than you realize.

The surprising truth is that opportunities pop up all over once you get started. Here are just a few examples of the benefits I’ve experienced from pursuing a creative career, and you could too.

1. Tax benefits of creative work

Once you start treating your hobby as a business, you can write off many of the expenses you incur in the course of doing work you love. That includes equipment, supplies, networking lunches, training, travel, and much more.

I was able to write off most of my lessons, workshop and course fees, materials, and related travel expenses while I learned the ropes in new industries and applied what I learned in my businesses.

Think of it as a cash-back bonus for being the artist you already are and doing what you love.

2. Creativity spillovers into other areas

Creativity is really a way of life. It doesn’t stay confined to your studio when you are writing, designing, sculpting, or marketing. Your ideas, inventive solutions to problems, growing resume of experiences, and newly acquired skills flow over into all areas of your life. Everything you do benefits.

Let’s say you become a whiz at writing newsletters to market your wares. That skill can easily carry over into your day job and increase your value to your current employer. You could also help peers with your new knowledge as a freelancer.

Training skills are definitely transferable. A Train-the-Trainer session that I initially dreaded taking at my full-time job gave me many super ideas to strengthen the career and music workshops I offer.

3. Surprising job and gig offers

When you are inspired and passionate about your work, everyone notices. Your excitement attracts both people and offers you never expected. Folks see that you have something going on and they love to be part of that momentum.

When I promote my teaching studio, I often get more offers to perform. It seems counterintuitive, but the visibility keeps me on top of peoples’ minds.

Each time I expanded into new areas in my music career, I’ve gotten more excited about life in general. Colleagues sensed that passion and offered me both full-time and part-time jobs. This is common. You’ll find that some offers are tempting, some are not, but it sure is nice to be in demand!

4. Partnership and collaboration opportunities

Once you go public with your art, writing, or music, other people start to see what you are doing and how you can work together. They propose ideas for collaborations and new projects.

Just by setting out as a solo musician and teacher, I’ve gotten opportunities to be in bands, to collaborate on songwriting, writing and instructional products, to head up festival committees, and even to be on a foundation board.

If you had asked me when I started, I never would have anticipated I’d have had these all these great experiences. You’ll never know unless you take the steps.

5. Fan funding options

Fan funding, also known as crowdfunding, is huge right now. It has plusses and minuses but overall there are many advantages for artists. If you grow your platform through helping other people, they will likely be very happy to return the favor with your latest project – whether it’s a book, e-book, live production, CD, exhibit, or video.

These campaigns are a lot of work to do well. You’ll need to do your research and keep up the momentum and the communication. But the results will be well worth it. Your backers become part of your support team.

I recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for a music festival and may use the experience I gained to record my next CD. If you have a dream project and even a start of a fanbase, it pays to test the waters.

6. Charity sponsorships

Businesses commonly sponsor the performing arts and related events. Charity sponsorships, although lesser known, are growing quickly.

Performers develop very loyal and trusting fanbases and charities are happy to pay artists to take a few minutes out of a show or presentation to raise awareness and leverage the trust they’ve built with their audiences. This form of outreach is more effective than any other advertising the charities do, including print media, radio, or TV. Anyone who is regularly in front of groups – speaking, performing, or teaching – can apply, and the income potential is significant.

My musical mentor has headed up these programs for 20 years and is pushing the $1B mark for monies raised for charity, with artists from all levels and walks of life. The only requirement is that you be in front of people 20-25 times per year, either performing, speaking, or teaching workshops, etc. You could be in coffee shops, schools, libraries, festivals, or stadiums filled with tens of thousands.

Today’s audiences are socially conscious and often want to help. Charities value the relationships you’ve built with your fans. You can do good in the world and supplement your income. Everyone wins.

7. Becoming a certified teacher

Your mentor or coach may train others to do the same work they do. If you are a star student and advocate, you may benefit from being certified to teach their method. You have a trusted credential and exposure to their audience of already engaged fans.

Adding a proven, world class performance program to my regular music lessons was great for my program offerings as well as for my students. I receive a commission on top of my regular teaching rates, but most importantly I represent a successful approach that I practice and strongly believe in.

If this idea appeals to you, start doing some research in your field and studying with people you admire.

8. Grant opportunities

I am learning more about these as a I am preparing a proposal for a non-profit community arts program. There are grants and residencies available to individual artists if you are willing to do the research, put in the work to craft an amazing proposal, and prove that your art fulfills a need in the community that foundations champion.

Grant writing is a skill like any other. It takes willingness to learn and hone your craft, but it’s well worth the effort.

The bottom line?

You don’t have to know where all your money will come from before you even begin. As a matter of fact, NOT starting is what keeps you from finding the opportunities! Inaction and indecision are the culprits that leave money on the table.

There are truly as many ways to fund a creative career as there are people in the world.

Be open. Apply as much creativity to finding ways to get paid for your work as you do to actually doing your art.

Take those steps. If you’re at all serious about making money with your art, you won’t need to sell your soul forever just to keep a roof over your head.

Leanne Regalla spent over 20 years in corporate America. Twelve of those years she pulled double duty as a part-time entrepreneur, much to the dismay of her black lab. Leanne is now a self-employed writer, musician, and coach who is on a mission to help creative people of all types how to pursue their art without going broke, living in their cars, or starving to death. Grab insider tips on building a solid income here The Rebel Artists’ Mastermind – 12 Top Experts Speak Out On Making Audacious Money From Your Creative Career.

I was waiting for my daughter to get out of school, when another mum asked, “How are you doing?”

“Good,” I said breathlessly, “but crazy busy!”

(Lie #1: I certainly was busy, but I was not well at all.  My back pain had returned in spades and the stress was so bad I’d started getting recurrent cold sores in my mouth.)

“I’ve got a launch coming up, I created a new product, and I’m wrapping up the book chapter I’ve been writing on contract.  And of course the hubby’s been out of town a lot, so doing most of the child care. But,” I sighed, “I just have to get through April and things will slow down.”

My friend cocked her head and asked, “Haven’t you been saying that since October?”

Lie #2, that I thought everything would “slow down next month,” was the worst of all, because at least part of me believed it.  Indeed, I’d been engaged in a vocational sprint for more than six months, where the finish line always remained just a few steps ahead of me.

In my last update on my no goals experiment, I shared 3 strategies for de-cluttering your commitments. I’m here to say I tried juggling and failed.  It was a good experiment, but at least for me, I couldn’t make it work.

I decided the only real solution was to remove all work commitments and start completely over.

For many of my clients, the thought of starting over is one of their biggest fears.  There were certainly days I just wanted to curl up and hide in my room.  I was so stressed about the how: how to break ties without burning bridges, how to throttle back without losing momentum, and how to focus on the work I love without burning out.

In this post, I’ll show you how I’m addressing all three of those concerns and how you might do the same.

Breaking ties without burning bridges

Last year I accepted a part-time job to write thought pieces on the topic of human performance enhancement. It’s been a great gig, but the time commitment turned out to be a lot greater than the client or I anticipated.

It became apparent back in November that I wasn’t capable of juggling this project and my business while preserving my sanity, but I couldn’t see a way to back out without hurting my relationships or reputation.

The key to making a clean break was to combine honesty with empathy.

Instead of spending a lot of time worrying about how to do everything, I looked for an exit point that served us both. It’s less than we originally planned on, but it doesn’t leave them in the lurch either.  And just having a clear end date to the project reduced my stress, making me more effective for the time I have left.

Throttling back without losing momentum

I just wrapped up the latest launch for the No Regrets Career Academy, my most successful ever.  My goal-oriented, over-achiever tendency would be to celebrate by starting five new creative projects. Simultaneously.

Thankfully, the voice in my head that thought it was a bad idea didn’t back down this time.

Of course, I didn’t want to clear my commitments and keep them cleared.  I just wanted to add back activities more intentionally.  I’m calling it a “working sabbatical.”

I know from experience that working with new clients is an energy-producing activity for me.  It’s something I look forward to and it’s the first thing I’m putting back on my professional shelf.

Everything else will be added back once I’ve established a pace I can manage.  Many of you know I usually take a blogging sabbatical in July and August. This time, I plan to start that break immediately, but unlike in previous years, I won’t stop writing completely.  I’ll write when the desire strikes, but blog posts will be more sporadic between now and the end of August.

The key to throttling back was experimenting with sabbaticals before I needed one.

Prior experiments gave me the confidence that stepping away not only wouldn’t hurt my business, but would be good for it.  Real momentum takes the long view.

Doing what you love without burning out

You’d think that once you found the work you love, the issue of burnout would go away. Instead, it just changes the nature of the problem.

I’ve even considered I might be addicted to flow.  Maybe my next project should be a 12-step program for creatives (I’m kidding–mostly).

But I only have a little over a year left in London and I’m determined to enjoy it. This means in addition to making more time for work I love, I want more breaks to explore this awesome city and Europe in general. I also don’t want to approach my time off like another achievement checklist.

In the past, I’ve been terrible about this. I actually stress about how many places in Europe I haven’t visited yet, while simultaneously telling myself I don’t have time to be taking vacations!

The key to reducing burnout is to get clear on what provides real relaxation, and then scheduling time for it.

To start, I booked a weekend getaway for the family to Versailles.  We’ll stay in a hotel right on the grounds of the palace, where we can wander through the gardens to our hearts’ content. I’m also booking lunches with friends, an afternoon at the butterfly exhibit, and a day to draw inspiration at the Tate Modern over the next several months.

The other big change is I’m returning my weekends to their rightful place: with family and friends. Running a business necessarily means some hustle, but no one works their best when they’re working 7 days a week.

To new beginnings…

The more I thought about getting rid of my commitments and only adding back the ones I really wanted (and could handle), the more excited I got.

I started asking myself, what if my life was driven by joy alone?  Not ambition or obligation or fear.  Just joy.

This is fundamentally what the no goals experiment is all about.

It doesn’t mean you don’t take on challenges or avoid activities that are hard.  Those things absolutely bring me joy.

But I can let go of expectation, ambition, and envy.

Because I don’t need them. I’m lucky to already have everything I need.

Now I intend to enjoy it.  Slowly.

The response was over-whelming.

Many were along the lines of “Should I change careers/jobs or not?”  If you read the review, you know that “whether or not” type decisions are dangerous anyway. But this one in particular is troubling because it jumps to a solution (changing careers/jobs) before identifying the problem.

And THAT is a recipe for making a bad decision.

It occurred to me that before I can help you design a career you love, we have to discover and address the underlying problem.  If you’ve been struggling with the idea of career change for a while, you probably know this is easier said than done.

Over the next two weeks, that’s exactly what we’re going to tackle.  I’ll be running a free mini-course that unpacks the “Should I change” question and takes a step back.  We’ll examine

1. How to productively reframe the “I don’t know what I want, but it’s not this” mindset
2. How to challenge the limiting beliefs that hold you back
3. How to discover the real problem you’re trying to solve when contemplating career change
4. How to widen your options and prevent a catastrophic wrong turn
5. Case studies of alternatives that produced big wins

Finally, at the end of the two weeks, I’ll host a live Q&A webinar on April 20th that wraps up all the material and helps you confidently plan your next step, whether that’s a career tweak or a big leap.

This is a mini-course, which means I don’t want you to just READ about this topic–there are actual exercises to do that I’ve never released before.  That’s going to require some work and engagement on your part, but hey, it’s Spring.  Instead of cleaning your house, let’s work on the things that are really nagging you.

Of course, there is a catch.  Everything in the course is private and exclusive for my subscribers.  It also happens to be free for a limited time. If you’d like access to the material without paying big bucks, you have to sign-up here.

All the course material comes down on April 28, so don’t put this off.

Why am I doing this?  The No Regrets Career Academy will be opening again in just a few weeks. But as good as the No Regrets material is, I realized it’s worthless if you’re incapable of making a decision on the first question: should I consider a new career?  I’ll probably turn this into a paid course in the future, but for now, consider it my way of saying thanks.

Hope to see you on the other side!

As you’ll see below, this is a very valid fear.

This post is a true story of how one of my clients, Emma (not her real name), left a career in music for the money and stability of law, a decision that seemed grounded, rational, and one her family supported.  Unfortunately, the change proved a nightmare: she hated the work, and the money and stability she was chasing never materialized.

Emma has graciously agreed to share her story in the hopes you can learn some lessons and avoid her mistake.

The real question is: how do you know when the risk of career change makes sense?  At the end of the post, I’ll show you how you can get a “free map,” and hopefully prevent any wrong turns of your own.

In her words…

I hate my job.

Some mornings I wake up thinking, “Oh joy. I’ve survived another night. How has my life come to this?”

The thought of spending yet another eight and a half hours of my life, which I will never get back, performing menial, repetitive, unfulfilling, mind-numbing clerical tasks in an environment which has more than its fair share of patronising, pompous lawyers, who think they’re cleverer than they actually are, is soul-destroying.

So how did my life come to this?

Once upon a time, I was happy, hopeful, ambitious, optimistic and energetic. I didn’t know what boredom was.

I spent every moment I could pursuing music, which was my passion. I studied music at university and achieved what I set out to do, namely getting a first class honours degree. When I graduated, I made sure that my high school teachers heard the news because they had been incredibly inspirational. They told me I’d struggle because I wasn’t good enough, and I’d face too much competition from other students who would be better than me.

My mum and dad left school aged 16 with no qualifications and regarded academics with suspicion because “what they’re doing isn’t real work.” Each to their own. I eventually completed a Masters and then won a scholarship to pursue a PhD in music, which was wonderful, and not just because it irritated my parents to no end.

These days they seem to be highly delighted that I have a ‘proper job’ which I hate. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Five years later, I took leave of my senses, quit my PhD and went to law school. This seemed like a good idea at the time but, with hindsight, it was the biggest, fattest, hairiest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I was under the impression that law was a stable, secure profession and that it was high time for me to get into the real world. At the time, I was sick of academia for reasons which I won’t go into here, suffice to say that I reacted very badly to a series of unfortunate events.

Switching from music to law wasn’t as dramatic as it might appear. Working as a researcher gave me transferable skills such as the ability to research, write well, analyse different viewpoints, and to stand up in front of an audience to present my work.

I talked to lawyers in various fields, did some work experience, and was confident that I was making the right decision. I spent the next eighteen months completing a law conversion course, followed by the Legal Practice Course, with the intention of becoming a solicitor.

When I graduated in 2007, the recession was taking hold and the decline in the property market hit law firms hard. Many firms couldn’t afford to take on trainees. (In England, to qualify as a solicitor, students have to complete their academic training, followed by a two-year training contract in a law firm.)

Very few of my colleagues from law school managed to secure training contracts and, like me, took secretarial or administrative posts whilst applying for training contracts. Things are so bad now that anyone with legal qualifications who has any sort of job in a law firm is considered lucky. Oh, I am so blessed.

I made the best of a bad job and focused on going that extra mile in the hope I would get a training contract. Being a secretary was tolerable, because I thought it would give me a lot of practical experience which might lead to better things, but this didn’t happen.

Over the past six years I have experienced and witnessed so much frustration, bitter disappointment, and shabby treatment that I no longer have any interest in law. I have come to realise that it’s not my passion, and it definitely doesn’t suit my personality.

My prayers to the Redundancy Fairy have fallen on deaf ears, as did my honest, forthright rant during my last appraisal which led to my team leader asking me if I’d be interested in doing paralegal work, which would mean longer hours, more hassle, and no extra pay until I had proved myself.

You can probably guess what I said to that. His response was, “Please let us know if you change your mind.” Give me strength! Honestly, I feel like putting a “Do not resuscitate!” sign above my desk.

I’m grateful that I didn’t qualify as a lawyer, because my predicament could have been far worse. I recoil with horror from the kind of nonsense which solicitors, paralegals, and trainees have to put up with each day.

I’m certainly not the only miserable idiot in the village. Some of my colleagues have told me that they’re unhappy, but are resigned to their fate because, “It pays the bills” and “Everybody hates their job, don’t they?” When I tell them of the golden days when I had a job that I loved, they either get defensive, cross, or look at me in total and utter disbelief.

I know several lawyers who would love to escape from the law, but they think they’re trapped. I suspect that many of them are slaves to the bank. Their salaries pay for expensive mortgages, flash cars, school fees and suchlike. One solicitor told me she had applied for a weekend job stacking shelves at the grocery store to make ends meet. The term “fur coat, no knickers” springs to mind.

Anyway, I’ve learnt the following lessons from taking a wrong turn down Career Avenue:

• Don’t believe a word your schoolteachers tell you, especially when it comes to your abilities, or lack thereof.
• Talk is cheap. “If you work hard you will get a training contract / promotion / pay rise / bonus ….” is amongst the cheapest talk of all. If someone continually dangles a carrot on a stick, tell them where to stick the carrot, and offer to do it for them. What they do with the stick is up to them.
• If you find yourself praying to the Redundancy Fairy and telling the Powers That Be exactly what you think of your job in the hope that you’ll be shown the door, chances are you will still be chained to your desk, fighting sleep and boredom months, if not years later.
• When you have been ground down by the endless tedium of a dead-end job it’s not easy to find the energy to plan your escape with a clear head. Find some supportive, positive friends who will encourage you along the way, and avoid those sad individuals whose vocation in life is to pay the bills.

So, there you are. Had I the slightest inkling that I would spend over £30,000 in loans on courses to become (*drumroll ………..) a secretary, I simply wouldn’t have entertained the idea of pursuing a career in law.

I wish that I’d had access to the No Regrets Career Academy back then, because I certainly wouldn’t have made such awful mistakes, which have taken their toll. My self-confidence has suffered and I lack energy, focus, and motivation.

This has got to stop, and I vow to get out of the mire in 2013! Since I discovered the No Regrets Career Academy, things are improving.  I think the old me is making a comeback (God help us all).

Free advice: should you change careers or not?

I think what Emma’s story demonstrates is that when you’re unhappy, it’s easy to convince yourself that change is the only solution.  Not only may that prove to be untrue, but it’s nearly impossible to make the right change if you don’t have clarity on the problem you’re trying to solve.

So if you’ve found yourself agonizing over the decision “whether or not I should change careers,” let me talk you off that ledge for just a moment.

Over the next two weeks, I’m going to be running a free mini-course that unpacks that question and takes a step back.  We’ll examine

1. How to productively reframe the “I don’t know what I want, but it’s not this” mindset
2. How to challenge the limiting beliefs that hold you back
3. How to discover the real problem you’re trying to solve when contemplating career change
4. How to widen your options and prevent a catastrophic wrong turn
5. Case studies of alternatives that produced big wins

Finally, at the end of the two weeks, I’ll host a live Q&A webinar on April 20th that wraps up all the material and helps you confidently plan your next step, whether that’s a career tweak or a big leap.

This mini-course is absolutely FREE for all my subscribers. However, because I eventually intend to turn this into a paid product, the material won’t be public.  If you want in, you have to be an Everyday Bright or No Regrets subscriber.  (No need to subscribe again. If you’re already on one of those lists, you’re covered.)

I’ll be generating a ton content for the mini-course, so this will be the last public post until April 30.  I hope you’ll join me for a little “career Spring cleaning.”  It’s time to get your house in order!

I let myself get distracted by the quarter inch of dust over the stove’s exhaust, by the bare refrigerator, by the cat who wanted her mousey thrown again and again. Then there was lunch, and the cleaning up after lunch, and the laundry basket that never empties.

The rational part of me says that some days will be like this. That I shouldn’t expect to win every battle, much less a battle everyday.  In order to fight and win, you have to endure some endless days of marching.

Besides, I have a cold.

Remember the time Penelope Trunk wrote about selling her son’s goat for slaughter? That’s what I feel like I’ve done with you. Except she was able to save the goat and I’m afraid the only happy ending in my story is called tomorrow.

I know tomorrow is an unreliable friend.  He makes a lot of promises he doesn’t keep and doesn’t seem all that repentant.  And I still keeping lending him money.

I also know when I’ve been on a plane that was bucking like an untamed horse, I forgot all about tomorrow.  A surge of yesterdays crowded into my memory, eager for one last replay.  And not the ones you might expect.   They were the ones filled with small joys, like walking without purpose or listening to my daughter entertain herself with a blanket.

Happy sounds

I am writing this letter with my cat Pico stretched out in my lap.  When people see her, they always ask me if she’s pregnant.  No one ever asks me why her name is the same as the Spanish word for small.  Which means I can’t think about her without being both happy and sad.

She used to be skinny.  Now she gets fed too much because it is hard to do my work with a demanding cat and only 1300 square feet of living space.

I worry she’s lost years of her life to my unwillingness to curb her appetite. But I also knows she’s gained a lot compared to her days on the street, where she fractured her fangs from trying to eat the inedible out of desperation.

If it’s true that owners resemble their pets, I wonder if I am like Pico at her most desperate, or when she has all she needs and takes it for granted.

We both know this isn’t the last letter I’ll write.  We’ve had this argument before.  The truth is, I don’t really know where this is going.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

In my work, there’s a lot of urgency to “Do the work you were born to do!” or “Don’t die with your song still inside you!”

It’s easy to find myself straining, like I’m trying to understand someone speaking over a muffled loudspeaker. Is this my stop?  Do I need to change trains? Am I going the right way?

Of course, you and universe could care less.  There are no answers. No grand plans. No need to apologize.

I stumbled on some poems I’d written years ago, like the me-at-35 tapping the me-at-41 on the shoulder.  ”Look at this,” she said.

Imagine the geode of this world cracked open,
the radiance of everyday objects revealed—
the tea kettle and its shimmer of steam,
the spoon’s hazy splendor, the window’s
white cascade, every bush burning…

If I ever had something that could be called a mantra, this would be it: the extraordinary is hidden in the ordinary.

Can you see me?

Ze Frank says it more plainly.

What if this is happiness? What if happiness is the practice of a slow calligraphy of these small gestures?

I realize how funny it is to worry I haven’t been productive.  Most days are filled with mental jumping jacks and I call that success.  Today I’ve produced something real, tangible: a clean kitchen and a cat who is entertaining herself with the remaining bit of mess.

I don’t know what my expectations were from you or why I felt like my needs weren’t met.  I guess it’s like any relationship.  Misunderstandings grounded in nothing.

But I thought you’d like to know that when I picked up my daughter from school and asked her, “How was your day?”  She told me, “I don’t remember.”  I smiled and replied, “Me either.”

Then we ran up the hill, hand in hand, to go do nothing worth remembering … together.