Career Solutions for Creative People

There is a lot of advice out there for writers to leave their day jobs and become full-time writers. There's even quite a number of books advising writers how to balance a day job with their creative work. But this a book like no other - Ronda Ormont says that you not only need to have just any day job to support your writing, you need to have a “lifeline career”, a career that would anchor the artist in the “turbulent sea that is the world of the arts by providing him with practical necessities.”

Ormont suggests that many artists have a problem when there's an “imbalance between creative imperative and the need for career security in everyday living.”

Lifeline jobs should be jobs that not just give you money to meet your needs, but also give you some kind of emotional satisfaction and leave you enough energy to pursue your art.

Interestingly, one can choose a job that puts too much weight on creativity. And that's not good.

I learned this the hard way when I quit my too-demanding job for a job that was very physical. I thought that would free my brain to create. And for a while I did, but after a while, the lack of career progression, the unstable pay, and lack of emotional satisfaction got to me. Worse, the job left me isolated. The loneliness, financial insecurity and the frustration of not being able to use skills that took me 15 years to hone made me so down that I couldn't create. How ironic. I took the job, thinking that I'd be able to create more, but ended up short circuiting my creativity!

Now, I have a “lifeline job”, and I'm very happy to have it. It's by no means perfect, mind you, but it was challenging enough to make me feel useful and gives me the social connection that makes the extrovert me happy. I work from afternoon to night, and while many would groan at the schedule, I delight in it because mornings are mine, and I'm far more creative and productive in the morning.

Ormont validated my decision - one that many would consider drastic. (I literally moved countries to make it possible!!) But I'm a far happier writer for it.