Unfortunately for me, I want to be a creative person full time. There's been a series of attempts.

1 - Animation

I was a grade A student in high school and took lots of AP's including AP art and design. My councilors said with my grades my state's flagship school would be a good safety school and the Ivy's where a reasonable reach. She was wrong about that and it's all been downhill from that conversation. Long story short I couldn't get into an art school with a scholarship. I went to the ONLY state school to accept me, could never get an internship all 3 years (had enough AP's to graduate early), and graduating with my degree in animation at the top 10% of my class with a portfolio reviewed by and references from 2 emmy award winning animation professors didn't mean anything to studios. I would go to networking and hiring events, portfolio and resume reviews, talk to recruiters, get referrals, even move to LA. All for 0 job offers after years of trying.

2 - Design

While I was trying to get into animation I worked a graphic design job. It didn't pay enough, especially for LA, so I beefed up my college portfolio to highlight my motion design stuff and started applying. A year passed with no interviews and I got laid off. I got a certification in UX/UI design and applied there too. Another year passed. I assure you - whatever job advice you have (talk to recruiters, send out 100s of applications, tailor your applications, ask your dad to get you a job) - I did it! Multiple times. No luck.

3 - Self Employment

Throughout this entire stint I would have side hustles I tried (and failed) to get off the ground. I tried to be a gallery artist. Sold one drawing. Had a painting featured at the High Museum of Art. Did some local art fairs (and sold nothing). Absolutely no one else ever cared about representing my work despite it. Okay. Cool. There was an online original painting business - no sales. Online art prints - 10 sales in 2 years. Art on stuff (notebooks, zipper pouches, etc.) - 7 online sales and I made money at in-person markets but never enough to break even on the booth fee. Alright; fabulous.

4 - Marketing

After my layoff year from the graphic design job I got a job as a marketing operations coordinator - so not even doing the marketing. Just fetching virtual coffee so other people could do it. I decided to lean in. If art doesn't want me, maybe money will! I learned as much about marketing as I could to apply it to a future business attempt. I got my PMP certification and applied to project management jobs. You can probably guess how well this went.

5 - Self Employment Take 4 (current)

I still work that marketing job. My company laid off everyone but me and my boss' boss. The company is in shambles so there's not really a clear job for me right now other than sending bills to accounting. So artistic. So fulfilling. If I have to talk to META customer service one more time I'm going to crash out. Since the lay offs at the job I've been applying elsewhere to almost no avail. I had 3 rounds of interviews including one with the CEO for a better paying marketing job!!! They then paused hiring. Seems both art and money don't want me. I've started another business - a stationery shop. 11 sales in 5 months - so the marketing knowledge is helping me do a lot better. But I had a collection launch today to crickets that sent me into a bit of a spiral.

THE DILEMA

I keep trying as MUCH and as HARD as I can to make my career cooperate. It just refuses to go my way. Any advice I can find online assumes I haven't tried, didn't do some obvious thing, or some empty motivational platitudes like "you haven't quit until you stop trying (like as if I don't have bills to pay)" is going to help. I've started therapy and my therapist is very helpful on everything else - but on this topic he tends to tell me to just follow my dreams. I feel like he has to watch me show up every day and sponsor events for promotion and work with influencers for marketing and post to 5 social media platforms every day and start a mailing list and start a youtube channel and read marketing books and go to webinars by my local SCORE mentors (all things I'm doing BTW) and yet still make 0 progress after keeping this up for a year to understand what I'm talking about. There is NO lack of trying - but nothing ever works. I just can't seem to be a full time creative. I can't even do plan B and make enough money for an apartment. I don't know what else to do or how to deal with these feelings. I'm always searching for some kind of solution, but the truth is it takes hard work, time, and luck to be successful and luck is just not on my side at the moment. To anyone who read all this - how do you manage to live your life knowing what you truly want isn't coming to you? How would you stay motivated in business 4 and somehow believe it's going to work after all the previous failures? What am I doing wrong? Is this normal?

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