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I sympathize with all of you who are struggling to make the choice between a completely creative career and the typical office job. I have been struggling with this for awhile now myself and have found a good comprimise.

I am a fine arts graduate and really didn’t know what to do with myself when I left school. I found a job in retail just to start making some money to pay off my student loans. I was promoted within my first year there to their head office and became the assistant designer.

This opportunity opened my eyes to a career option that I hadn’t considered before and was an option that could be rewarding both creatively and financially.

I learned so much from my time with that company and I hit a point where I wanted to further my education and experience in the field and I decided to apply to Fashion Design and Fashion Buying at Ryerson and George Brown for next year. I also learned to sew, and I am currently working away at starting my own business that I hope to run on the side while in school.

I think you can be successful with a creative venture it just takes a lot of hard work, dedication and a true love for what you are doing. A lot of people will try and stop you along the way and in my experience tried to convince me to become a teacher, or a lawyer or a retail manager everything you can think of that wasn’t my true passion and for me would have been settling. I in fact know many people who graduated from fine arts and gave up their dreams of pursuing a career in the creative world and are now doing nothing related to anything creative what so ever.

I recently read an article on Fresh Baked Goods in the magazine I mentioned earlier called Worn. It’s a great article about how the owner Laura Bernhardson learned to knit with a knitting machine and at first didn’t consider opening a shop but when she was constantly stopped on the street and was asked where she got her sweater from she decided to go into business. The machine has enabled her to produce product a lot faster than by hand and has given her more time to return to hand knitting items.

If you have the chance you should really pick up a copy of this magazine it’s a great read, and jam packed with interesting articles.

Hey everyone here is an inspirational story about becoming successful using your creative abilities. I just finished reading this article on The Globe and Mail website, I would love to have the success this woman has had.

For me, all along, I have really struggled with day jobs and how they have not fulfilled me creatively… I know how good I feel when I am involved with or working on or completing a creative “project,” so 52 Projects was my way of pushing that, of putting it down on paper and sort of organizing my efforts to really get creative projects done… and interestingly enough, this project-making effort has helped the day job situation get better… I have understood for a while, for me anyway, that the key is to keep converging the stuff that pays the bills with my creative project-making efforts… that if I keep pushing it, they will meet at some point and I will get closer to doing what I truly want to be doing “full time”… I’m not there, but I am moving in the right direction! And I really do owe this forward movement to making projects, to making an active effort to tap into my creativity as often as I can.

It’s unfortunate that many creative individuals tend to shy away from pursuing a creative job because they believe they won’t have the same stability and monetary security as a “cubicle” job. It is obviously a misconception and one that many of my artist friends also believed once upon a time…now, many of them run their own businesses – graphic design, interior design, jewelry design, clothing design, professional photographers, and visual artists.

As long as you are passionate about what you want to accomplish, there are no limits to the possiblities out there. I’m happy to say that by being optimistic but not too idealistic (of course it helps to have some business savvy), I finally chose the creative career path and started my own business. I can honestly say that happiness, a creative outlet and money can all be achieved…and used in the same sentence. Cheers!