If you are looking to pursue a creative career or pursue a passion in something that you've always wanted to do but you never really quite had the faith in yourself you still with self doubts this episode is for you this is probably the question that I get asked the most about my path to being a full time writer slash kind of running my own business full time and I wanted to talk about that because I think a lot of us get this impostor syndrome which we've talked about in a previous episode already but also just self doubt around actually pursuing a passion that we have whether you want to make money from it or not and the things that can hold us back from doing that so
So I want to just dive in and tell you about my story and my journey because I think it's really helpful to hear other people's journeys I love hearing about how other entrepreneurs or letters have gone on to either be full time or they still work another job and are successful with writing and find a lot of passion and fulfillment from it which I think is the most important thing so I always always always wanted to be a writer I always was a writer growing up I wrote a lot of short stories and a couple novels in high school
And I wrote fiction and I wrote short stories about things in my life, about fictional things that I would make up and I knew that I wanted to be a writer I knew that I wanted my name to be in those bookstores on the shelves I used to go to the library pretty much every day of my life
It can get out stacks of books and sit on my bed and read them for hours at a time that was my thing.
And i loved kind of escaping into new worlds and writing those new worlds too. So I knew that that was something that I wanted to do and I feel like in the creative world in the arts world as you get older you kind of realize that people don't look down on the arts but they're not as respected as other maybe higher paying jobs and like STEM fields and i think that i started discouraging myself from it from pursuing it because i didn't want to waste my time or waste money or anything like that on pursuing creative writing as a career so i still did it all the time i found poetry and college and started writing poetry.
But I didn't study writing in college I studied communications and PR with a focus on marketing which has definitely benefited me in my career as a writer but I resisted taking I felt like it would be a waste and that's so not true if you are taking creative writing or whatever as a major and you're taking classes on that it is not a waste you are pursuing something that you enjoy doing and once you get better at which is amazing.
I just kind of let like society and also my own brain tell me that it wasn't worth pursuing and I'm so glad that I didn't stop writing completely I just didn't really take classes on it but I still did it all the time I still practiced I still read a lot which is such a great way to practice too so I started writing every single day in college I started writing country every single day and started growing my audience and that's when I realized that could still pursue this as whether it was a career or a hobby or something that maybe was like a side hustle as they say so that's when I decided to really focus on that so still in college I was growing my audience on social media and I self published my first book in 2016 it was my second year of college.
After that first year or so it wasn't like anything life changing but it was like a decent little bit of side income from that. And I was like “OK this is something. Let's try again.” So I continued focusing on marketing and social media and all of that and growing the audience to self publish my second book in 2019 and that's when I think things took a turn for me even though it was actually slow upon launch.
Again it wasn't anything life changing that time either but I still had this like gut feeling inside that there was more to come and that's one thing that I think is really really important for pursuing your passion in life is trusting on the inside that it will work out even if there are signs that it might not. Even if it is slow. It was slow for me I know that other writers have taken longer and other writers have gone faster than me in terms of like publishing and selling a lot of books and all of that.
But for me like I'm on year seven and wrapping up year 7 and I made the decision to pursue it full time last year so you know it takes time. It takes a lot of consistency it was so worth it and so if I would have looked at those sales numbers maybe early on or if I would have said nobody was gonna read this or nobody reads my poetry, nobody wants my poetry I don't have these important things to say. I'm not good at this or i'll never make enough money from this or there's already so many out there. There's already so many writers out there artists out there photographers out there, whatever you do, there's not. We could always use more. I think the world could always always always use your art your words your photos your drawings whatever it is, there's an audience for it and it might be hard to reach that audience. It takes time it takes a lot of effort and marketing but I think the Internet has—there's pros and cons to the Internet and there's pros and cons to social media, but one of the biggest pros is being able to reach people all around the world very easily who might be a good fit for your art.
So that's one piece of advice that I wanna share in terms of just trusting your gut instinct and knowing that this is something that you're meant to do and that it's going to work out as long as you don't give up because whenever you give up we'll never know. Right now if you're someone who is struggling to find the motivation to pursue a passion I think you have to remember why you do it in the first place and take away all of those things that decide which sounds kind of like hypocritical of me because I'm just talking about like money and growing your following and all of these things and that is great and important if it's something that you do want to pursue as a career, but I think starting out in a hobby or being really passionate about a hobby and then losing that passion you have to remember your original reason why.
So I think taking away the money and taking away the audience and other people's opinions really help with that and it's hard to do. I definitely have had a tendency in the past to rely on what other people are telling me and use that to guide my career or my path or what I write about when in reality I need to remember why I write. And why I write is to help myself heal to work through emotions to process things and also to help other people feel less alone which feels amazing and it's wonderful to do that but it comes down to me and why I enjoy writing and why i've always gone to books and writing as a passion.
So please think about why you love your passion why it makes you happy or feel fulfilled and remember that. Keep it on like a post it note or journal or your phone notes app or something close to you whenever you aren't feeling motivated. Remember your why.
And I also wanna say that passions can change. If you aren't feeling passionate about something and you are trying all these things to get back into it and you feel like you're kind of forcing yourself to, it's OK if you're passions shift and change. We all grow as people we change over time our interests change. I've had a lot of changes in my life too in terms of things that I like or dislike and that's OK too. You don't have to force yourself. I know that that's trickier whenever it is your job but finding a new passion that you can do in addition to your job or taking a break from a hobby that you used to do all the time and trying something new, with a new sport or some sort of arts and crafts to get your creative juices flowing, it's just important that we don't stay stagnant and feel like we have to force ourselves to do something we're passionate about but then not actually get that creative fulfillment anywhere else.
So that is my advice for you is to kind of give yourself grace if you aren't really passionate if you're not feeling motivated take a break from that and try something new and see if that sparks your creativity a little bit more.
Something that I get asked about pretty regularly is about the social media world and how I kind of stay motivated to promote myself, to continue sharing my work pretty much on a daily basis. First of all I just wanna say it is tiring. I'm not like complaining that it's a part of my job to like post on Instagram and tiktok, but it is exhausting. I've definitely burned out from it I try my best to take breaks to not be on those apps as much and I definitely have improved a lot I really don't go on them much anymore outside of posting and engaging a little bit but I think it's really really important to have those boundaries and to remember that it's a part of promoting yourself but it doesn't have to be your whole life. It doesn't have to be the only way that you promote yourself and as creative people who want to either pursue this as a career or side thing and have people enjoying our work or just sharing them as a hobby and have fans of our work which is completely normal and a nice thing to have, it's not selfish to want people to enjoy what we do but I do think it's important to realize that it is a part of our job to promote ourselves and get our work seen by people and if you can, sometimes it's nice to have like a separation of a personal account versus the one that you share your creativity on. I don't follow that advice myself but like I said I have gotten pretty good at stepping back and not letting myself kind of like mindlessly scroll um and compare myself to other people although it certainly happens sometimes I'm not I'm not perfect in that regard.
But I think that we have to be really mindful of the time we're spending on doing our passion and actually doing the thing, whether it's writing or art or whatever versus comparing ourselves or thinking about what we could be doing better. I think that tends to happen a lot too there's definitely been times where I haven't written all and i've been too busy focusing on selling my books and all of that which is super important and and I love doing that and finding new readers but we have to remember at the end of the day it comes back to our passion and why we pursue it. So I hope that that's helpful. I know that I definitely get asked a lot about how I kind of do that and still be able to have time to write and whatever. When I did work a full time job I did have to be very clear about setting boundaries and setting time to write or else I would end up just only doing social media stuff and working on my website and working on it you know promoting the books that I have and not really focusing on the writing piece and I know not every writer has that problem a lot of people focus more on the writing and then not really promoting what they have which I totally understand. I am a marketing background so it this fun for me and I know not everyone relates to that so goes both ways having a clear boundary of like when I'm going to be writing and then when I'm going to be focusing on my business or my audience or selling.
So I think that all kind of works together but we do have to be clear about that I just want to reiterate that there is space in the world for your art and for your creativity and for your passion maybe you don't have a creative passion and maybe you're more like a numbers person or whatever I think everything takes a level of creativity but I know what everyone thinks of themselves as a creative person. So if you're listening to this like I have a passion i want to pursue but it's not creative, I'm not trying to exclude you absolutely any passion that you have the world needs it and there are not too many of us creatives out there I don't think there can ever be too many. The world needs your art the world needs your words the world needs your voice and you—your brain your mind your soul—needs you to pursue this creative passion too.
Small step
Remember why you do what you do. Write it down. That's this week's small step for sure is to just really think about what makes you happy, what makes you feel fulfilled maybe it's something that you don't consider a passion right now. Maybe it's something you only do a couple of times but that's the first thing that comes to mind whenever I ask what what fulfills you what makes you feel happy what makes you feel passionate use that run with that. Research to see if you can take a course on it or a local class or get coffee with someone who does this for their job or does it as a hobby get to know people who are in that field or that creative passion and practice it often do it often and then shout it from the rooftops if it's something that you want to pursue as a hobby or a career: promote. I know that a lot of people hate it but you have to if you want to get your eyes on it no one will ever be able to see your amazing talents if you keep it to yourself so that's what I can say that's my advice for today.
I hope this was helpful if you have any questions that I can answer about this I would love to chat about this more it's something that I'm really really passionate about is helping other people creative, people feel more energized and passionate about what they do and feel like they can truly pursue it. That's why I started the poetry club, my online poetry community to help other poets pursue publishing and marketing their books. That's why I help other authors of all genres market their books so if that sounds like you please reach out to me on my links are gonna be in the description of the video just to learn more about the different things that I offer but creativity is just so so so important. We consume art every single day while we're listening to music or reading or watching a show that someone created, you're consuming art every single day and the world needs yours too.
Thank you for listening to another episode of small steps to self love if you have two seconds to leave me a rating or review on apple podcasts or wherever you're listening I would really really appreciate it and if you're watching on youtube giving me a thumbs up and leaving a comment about something that you really took away from this episode or the question that you have for me means the world to me. I would love to hear from you. Thank you for listening and i'll talk to you next week.