There is no such thing as the perfect career. That is what many people really think, and it is sad, because there are plenty of rewarding, challenging, and fulfilling career opportunities that allow creative people to use their gifts and be rewarded handsomely for their efforts. Those who settle for less than the best simply haven’t found the right job  – yet. You can have it all when it comes to a creative career – if you know how.

The fact is that most people hate their jobs. They would rather be doing something else – anything else. It doesn’t have to be that way. What if I told you that you would never have to work another day in your life? Would you be interested? When you find the right fit in a career, it no longer feels like work. You wake up every day excited about how you earn your living. This perfect harmonizing of your talents, skills, personality and work style creates a passion and a desire as well as a feeling of contentment that is worth more than gold.

It can all be yours, if you will read this travel guide and apply its principles.

The challenge is that the creative arts are very different from other fields. To go ahead, you sometimes have to zigzag to the top. Let me show you when to zig and when to zag to make the most of the opportunities out there.

Finding contentment in your career is a lot like looking for treasure. Using a map, you embark on a journey, an adventure in search of yourself. The thing is, there isn’t a pot of gold waiting for you when you get to the spot marked ‘X’ on the map. The buried treasure is within you. The pursuit of the gold (or the goal) is the reward. Because, when it comes to a career, there is no ‘there’ there. It is all a search. Enjoying the search is what success is all about.

This is the age of opportunity for the creative person. Innovation and ideas are gold. Ridicule and red tape are being replaced with respect and rewards for the clever and creative person The work environment and job market are changing, and they are changing for the better – for you.  Are you ready for these exciting times ahead? This guide will put you in a position to prosper. What parents, teachers, and bosses might see as problems (sloppiness, habitual tardiness, short attention span, nonconformism) can actually be hidden assets in the search for work in a rewarding and interesting creative career. Intuition, emotion, divergent thinking, daydreaming, thriving on chaos, big picture thinking, cleverness, open-mindedness, and an ability to play and have fun are virtues in the right setting.

Even so it is not exactly easy to build a career in the creative arts. You have to be able to deal with heaping helpings of rejection. It is a part of everyday life for the creative person.

There is also that funny feeling that you don’t quite fit in – and you don’t. Thank God. An unconventional person with unconventional ideas, you are often seen as immature, temperamental, moody, difficult, distracted, irresponsible and irrational.

The truth is, you can be your wonderful self and still get ahead in the corporate world – or work for yourself, as many creative people do. Whichever you choose, this guide will help you manage your career using a whole brain approach that takes advantage of the way you are, without forgetting the way the world works.

Helping You Help Yourself 

It is time to move on, move up and move out with a new mission. This guide is about taking charge of your destiny. Be the author of your life story. Its hero.

This guide will show you how to find, create and tell you unique story, and then how to earn a living doing what your love.  You will learn how to overcome the challenges the hero faces, and how to make your nature and your creativity work for you.  You’ll learn how to market yourself and your art even in a crowded marketplace, survive and thrive in the battlefield that is the creative business, be your own boss and work for others, take the ‘free’ out of ‘freelance’, rise to the top without stepping on too many toes, and use your natural abilities to find a perfect pitch and harmony in your story about work.

Your story is your life

There is a direct, undeniable correlation between the story you tell yourself about you and your career and your life story. It is less about what you do for a living than what you can live with doing. Finding fun and fulfillment at work spills over into the rest of your life. Without it, your health will suffer, your creativity will suffer, your work will suffer – and so will everybody around you. You don’t need to live that way.

If you are thinking of giving up on a creative career and getting a ‘real’ job, stop right there. When you settle for less than wat is best for you, you instantly get less than you settled for. Don’t sell yourself short. The regret will eat you up inside. Don’t miss your chance; it may be right around the corner. Instead, get going and go for it  – be bold.

Don’t let others push boulders in your path and fill your head with factoids like ‘most businesses fail in the first year’, ‘it is too competitive out there’, ‘there are NO jobs’, ‘you don’t have enough experience or talent’, ‘only the top can make a living’. It is bad enough that these insecure and misinformed people are telling you why you cannot succeed. It is worse if you believe them. Don’t let anyone talk your dreams down.

This guide is for creative heroes in all walks of life – composers, brand gurus, painters, poets, musicians, magicians, designers or dj’s, writers or actrices. It is not meant to apply to just the glamour jobs; whatever form your creativity takes, you can apply this story.

For everyone who tells you ‘you can’t make a living doing that’ there are hundreds of stories of creative people in Florence who found a way to turn something they thought was fun and would even do for free into a fulfilling career.  I will help you take your powerful creative energy and harness it, and you will beat the odds, making a living doing what you love to do. Your life will become a legend. A work of art.

Managing Your Life 

Few people know what they want to be when they grow up, and even fewer creative people want to grow up. Maybe you won’t discover your true calling until you make some Hero’s Journeys. Testdrives in your dream jobs by exploring stories of heroes you are interested in. Meeting your rolemodels and interviewing them for the Hero’s Journey.

Is it not better to make a testdrive in your dream job, meeting people who do what you believe you will love to do for a living, using that incredible imagination of yours, than waste years on a dead – end job? One of the key things you will work on here is finding and creating your story about what you want to do (not for the rest of your life, but what you want to do now) and eliminating the careers that are not a fit.

The choices that lead to a life of creative expression and financial security are there for the making. The catch is that creative careers are often unconventional and in some cases completely unchartered. The challenge is that there are a million different things you could do.

The key to success in any career is clarity in your story. Becoming clear about who you are and what you want is the first part of this Hero’s Journey in Florence. Then how you get what you want is covered in great detail. It is hard work, but this is your chance to reinvent yourself. Don’t let it pass by you.