I chose a creative career path after the military. It’s harder than I expected.
It’s hard not to cash-in my TS security clearance and take a contracting job at a desert location for $100,000/year tax-free pay. It’s hard to borrow from a credit card when I could start an entry-level job in my Air Force career field for a $60-70k annual salary.
It’s hard to watch my creations grow slowly – but grow nonetheless.
The Questions
Every idea I have brings a set of questions. Aside from the obvious “Will this work?”, I wonder things like:
- Who will be impacted?
- Has this been done before too much already?
- How will my thing standout?
- Did I not start creating soon enough in my life?
- How can the masterfully written about VA benefits help me?
- Am I doing enough for this thing to fly?
- How much time will this take to create?
- What’s going to catch first?
- Which ideas can help pull the others?
- How much will I need to do alone for this to work?
- Do I know enough or need to learn more to pull this off?
- Am I too old to learn how to do this?
- Can I fit lottery tickets into my current budget?
I have to know if my ideas will work or not…I don’t think I can articulate the level of compulsion.
These kinds of questions would eat away at me sitting behind a desk in a cubicle. Most of them had already started to while I was enlisted.
I have to know if my ideas will work or not – like HAVE TO know. I don’t think I can articulate the level of compulsion. There’s no other way than to play them out.
You can read about some of the ideas I’m putting in motion in the Mike Writing blog post “Personal and Professional Goals, Defining Success Series” published in Jan 2019. (If the link fails, visit mikewriting.com, and look for the Defining Success series.)
For Me, For the Kids
With respect to having not gone back to work for the military as a civilian, I feel like I owe it to myself and my children to try. To try making my ideas win.
I’m choosing this creative path to help me learn how to achieve things for me. In the past, I’ve written about feeling like I’ve lived my life pursuing goals for someone else to be proud of me or for others to pat me on the back. I carried these ideas from my childhood. My goals and accomplishments should satisfy ME. I’m the judge of how well I’m doing.
It’s important that my children see me give my ideas chances to succeed. I don’t want them to grow up feeling like their path has to be common, predictable, or pre-ordained. The younger they are, the sooner they can learn, by my example, to embrace what’s already great in them so they can dominate the career paths they chose.