How to Quit Your Job and Do What You love - Part One

Since I made the decision to jump ship from the corporate world, I have noticed a few things.

When I get asked the inevitable "...so, what do you do?" and I reply "I'm an artist", more often than not, people respond with "THAT is AWESOME", "I SO wish I could go do THAT", or "you are SO lucky". I love these comments, I admit - I love what I do, and when you can answer the "what do you DO?" question with an answer that you're genuinely happy about, it is a great feeling.

Since I've been having these conversations, however, I have discovered that there is a staggering number of people out there who really and truly want to do the same thing I've done. My friends joke with me that I've convinced quite a few people to quit miserable jobs when I've talked to them in bars like this. A couple of photographers, a few painters and sculptors, a knitter/crochet-er, you name it, I've heard it. At this point, they either tiptoe around or ask me very bluntly - depending on how badly they hate their current position "HOW did you do it?" I usually respond with a very vague, but specific answer:

I'm still learning.

I've had to do a lot to get where I am. Having no art degree, no contacts outside Virginia, and hell - only a small French Grumbacher easel and some student-grade paint that had survived five moves - I knew I had an uphill climb, to say the least, but I had to start somewhere. I read everything I could on the internet, devoured the books I could find on Amazon, and asked everyone I could think of for advice, but I soon found that there's very little practical advice out there - no one wrote "How to Give Up a Big Paycheck For a Career That Typically is Associated With Dying Penniless For Dummies". I was on my own. For all that it's worth, however, I'll begin to give some practical advice over the course of this whole blog.

My ongoing series: How to leave your job to do what you WANT to do.

Part One: My Story

Before you even begin to tackle the who-what-where-when-why, take this one piece of advice.

Give up on the idea that you'll make it go away. Chances are, if you are really considering that kind of leap, you're already mid-air. Tim Burton, the creator of some of the most innovative films of the 20th Century, said one of my favorite quotes: "If you have the creative bug, it isn't ever going to go away. I'd just get used to the idea of dealing with it."

When I decided to finally listen to myself, I was literally scheduling my lunch break every day for one reason: to go into the park and - no, not eat lunch, but have a full-blown, honest-to-God panic attack. It was almost a daily occurrence. I was in Independence Park that day on my lunch break, reading a book called Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I had just gone through the most painful breakup of my life, and I literally needed something to at least distract me from life for one hour. My dear friend Celeste had recommended the book to me, and the first few chapters had blown me away - I literally thought that the woman had somehow written everything I had been going through. Her description of heartbreak is quite possibly the most identifying piece of literature I have ever read, BAR NONE. I sat down and began reading chapter 27 - ironic since I was 27 at the time - and I became terrified at how much the story was speaking to me.

Gilbert, after going through a divorce and a breakup that spurred a chemical depression, took a life-changing year-long trip that began in Italy. In Chapter 27, she spoke of how she and her friend took a day trip to Naples, asking a friend in Rome to recommend a specific pizza place. It made me laugh out loud when her friend took great pains to write down the name of the pizzeria, pressing the address into her hand and saying - with all the passion and emphasis that he could muster - an Italian ORDER:

"You must go there. You must have the pizza margherita. If you do not, please lie to me and say that you did."

Having had my own falling-in-love-with-Italy, I laughed - if you know Italian culture, you know that Italians are passionate about everything. You could ask a Roman or a Neopolitan about his shower curtain and they would convince you that their shower curtain is the best that design has ever had to offer, and no shower curtain will ever compete. Naples is quite possibly the pinnacle of this type of passion. Naples is, however, by far, the most dangerous city I have ever been in. I met a U.S. Marine while traveling who said he felt safer in Fallujah than in Naples. My sister - a seasoned traveler who has walked through dark alleys in Islamic countries - was genuinely terrified when she and I had to transfer trains late at night in Naples. Every guidebook will tell you to JUST NOT GO. But Neopolitans? They love it. They're passionate about everything, and more specifically, about being passionate. Considering they invented both pizza AND ice cream, yeah, it's worth examining despite the travel advisory.

Upon arriving Naples, Gilbert made a beeline for the pizzeria with her Swedish friend, Sofie. They order the Pizza Margherita, and soon fall deep in pizzalove. They look at each other and dare ask:

"Why do we even attempt to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even attempt food in Stockholm?"

Yes, it was that good. I realized in that very second something that to this day still brings tears to my eyes.

I was pizza in Stockholm.

Yes, you read that right. I had been trying for so long to make ME into something that I wasn't innately supposed to be, I had completely lost any sense of what I was. I had a great job, a Masters degree, a fabulous apartment, more designer jeans than I knew what to do with, great freaking hair (if I do say so myself)...and none of it was working. I was trying to fill a hole that wasn't ever going to be filled with promotions, jeans, purses, highlights or anything else - except that which I was ignoring. I was a pizza in Stockholm being made with the same ingredients, with the same methods, in the same ovens as the ones used in Italy - but that magic, fabulous pizza just wasn't happening. But Naples...every pizza cook in that pizzeria makes every pizza with the same feeling in every bone in his body -

THIS pizza is the BEST pizza that has EVER been made.

That's it. That's the secret ingredient. The passion. The love. The excitement. That's what made it the best pizza in the world. Nothing else came close.

I decided then and there that I was sick and tired of being Stockholm pizza. I needed to be Naples pizza. Perhaps by some divine intervention, it just came to me: I was never going to be happy in the career path that I had selected. There was no way around it - I needed to go do what I was, dare I say, born to do.

I walked back into work with the most euphoric sense of clarity that I have EVER experienced. I went home, poured a BIG glass of wine and called my mom my to tell her about my decision. I just blurted it out: "Mom I'm going to leave my job and go be an artist." I fully expected her to be stunned, start yelling, tell me I was stupid, or call the loony bin. But she surprised me by pausing and saying what every person who really knew me would later say as well.

"I think that's the best decision you've made in ten years."

That was the easy part.

How did I do the other stuff? How am I still eating? How did I give it up? Stay tuned.