My son said, "For what?" Then he pointed to an advertisement for Target — a boxing glove that punches images of the flu. He said, "Did Obama win for killing that stuff?"

I saw a teaching moment. I tried to think of something good. I said, "He won for being nice to people and reminding us all to be nice every day."

The Nobel Prize Committee said something interesting about Obama's award:  "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."

And this, I think, is what good leaders do. They help us a see a future that we like, that we're a part of, and that we can help create. In the case of Obama, his combination of strong values and intellect and charisma are mesmorizing to watch. And to me, his lack of BS in politics is almost as revolutionary as his skin color in politics. I love the whole package, and he makes me proud to be a US citizen.

I feel a similar way, on a smaller scale, with the new CEO of Brazen Careerist, Ed Barrientos. I spent almost a year convincing him to love the company and then to be CEO of the company. There were other people who had offered to take the job. But I wanted this guy because he inspires each of us at the company to be our best selves. That's what leaders should do.

Sure, it's early for Obama to win the prize, but it's an acknowledgement that people are already stepping up and acting differently because Obama has set the stage for people to be their best selves.

Very few of us feel that we can pick our country, but we can each pick our company. Companies with leaders who put people, the planet and profits on equal footing are companies that are most likely to give you that same feeling of pride that we feel today. When you choose your job, you choose your leaders. Today's Nobel Peace Prize award is a reminder to us that good leadership inspires everyone to be good. Find that in your career.

Hat tip: Melissa Mansfield

But I couldn’t be happier. For one thing, it’s a sign that my company, Brazen Careerist, is doing well. Remember when the company was running out of money and my electricity was getting turned off? There was no one worrying then that I was the wrong person for the CEO position. No one cared because it looked like we were going under.

But then the media started talking about how we could be LinkedIn for Gen Y and we started moving fast. I don’t worry about of money anymore, and we are moving at a faster speed because we can see where we are going, how we’ll make money, and how we’ll grow the community.

1. Know where your strengths are.
The thing that makes me great is my writing. I have spent my whole life writing, constantly trying to figure out how to earn money writing. My favorite thing I’ve ever written is this blog. I adore the conversation, I adore the format, the never-ending research, and the self-referential links, because that’s how my mind works: connecting random stuff together all the time trying to figure out the best path to happiness. Blogging is my dream-come-true media.

But I also love building companies. So I was in heaven for two years turning my blog brand into a social networking company.

I am great in that phase of a business–thinking, philosophizing, finding holes in markets, finding holes in ideas. I never give up. I always have another idea, and I don’t mind feeling lost day after day, week after week.

2. Watch where you gravitate.
But now the company needs to run fast, to execute a model we have confidence in. I am not fast at execution—I do not keep ten thousand things in my head at one time. Here’s a good example: I flew to DC to talk with investors and had about five hours to retool our presentation to incorporate a new marketing plan. I spent two of those hours writing a blog post.

And the more responsibility I had for running a large team, trying to hit many goals at once, the less work I did. Honestly, I just didn’t know what to do. I was outside my core strength.

And I know this:  the first sign that you are outside of your strengths is when you can’t make yourself do the work you need to do.

3. Find people who complement your strengths.
To get out of germination mode and reach our launch, I needed to surround myself with people with complimentary skills. I spent two years looking for business partners before I found Ryan Healy and Ryan Paugh. The way I knew it was a good fit is that as soon as I suggested we partner, they said yes, and then had a million ideas of their own.

Then, when the company was stuck financially, I found a new board member who runs a company with $150 million in revenue. He met with me every week for six months to help me focus on cash flow.

When the company was clearly moving too fast for me to keep up as CEO, I badgered another board member to be CEO. He told me a number of reasons why that wouldn’t work – he had had two huge exits and he wasn’t planning to be CEO again, and another company wanted him to be CEO,  and he wants to watch his kids play football. These are all good reasons that I overcame, and I got him to agree to be interim CEO.

4. Do what differentiates you.
So I’m going to be Chief Evangelist. This is a great job for me, because basically, I keep blogging, and talking to the media, and I go to SXSW with my fake tan.

Most of all, I am certain I’m right about Brazen Careerist. LinkedIn is a place to display your network, not build your network. Facebook is too personal to use as a platform for managing your professional life. The way to build your network is through conversation, and Brazen Careerist is a great tool for that network-building conversation that gets you control over your career. (And hey, you should sign up!) I can talk about this all day.

5. If you really can do the job, you’ll be doing it already.
Recently, I did a live chat on the Washington Post web site, answering fifty questions in sixty minutes about how to use social media to help your career.

The chat was fun, and people asked interesting questions. It was great exposure for Brazen Careerist. But during that hour I couldn’t help wondering: Who is making sure we’re hitting marketing numbers? Who is going to hire the new head of sales?

Now I have an answer: Ryan Healy.

In any office, employees gravitate to the job each should be doing, no matter what the titles are. Sometimes we gravitate to a job and it’s not available, and we go nuts doing something we shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes we gravitate to that job and it’s such a good fit for us that we do it even without a title.

Ryan Healy has been running day-to-day operations of the company for a while now. Without the official authority. Because he’s great at it. While I am thinking of ideas and philosophizing, Ryan is always asking, “What are we getting done?”

A lot of people say they should be doing a job they do not have the authority to do. Here’s some news, though: You’d be doing it already if you were great at it. Ryan Healy is now Chief Operating Officer at Brazen Careerist because he’s already shown he can do the job. That’s how you get serious promotions:  doing the job first, in an outstanding way.

Okay. So what you can expect from me is more blog posts, because when my blog traffic goes up, it’s good for Brazen Careerist. And you can also expect to see less of me feeling frazzled and crazy and fighting with Ryan. Because I’m not anymore. I’m back in my sweet spot, and I feel so lucky to be here.

Retail is a great way to get flexible work, (which is why I think we should see a surge in educated people taking retail jobs.) But most people don't aspire to retail because the work is not intellectually engaging. On the other hand, most of the intellectually challenging work in this world comes with inflexible schedules.

So the trick is not to get flexibility, the trick is to get it without losing engaging work and avoiding a pay cut. Also, keep in mind that flexible work is not about the hours, it's about control. Because most of us are fine with working long hours as long as we have control over those hours.

Given these parameters for thinking about flexible work, here are the tricks for landing that sort of job:

Be a star. There are great stories all over the place about women who negotiated. Brenda Barnes was CEO of Pepsi, then she quit to take care of three kids. She came back and took a position as CEO of Sara Lee. That’s the ultimate flexibility: A CEO position in the Fortune 500 with seven years off to raise kids.  But who is as talented in business as Brenda Barnes? Not many of us. The flexibility you can negotiate is directly commensurate to the star power you established before you started negotiating.

Be relentless. Flexibility comes, usually, after proving your worth to a company. Which means you can’t job hop to get flexibility unless you’re a rock star and can make it a precondition for hiring. Non rock stars need to stick around longer. Prove your worth, and then make tons of suggestions to get the specific flexibility you want—a new department, different hours, less travel, on-site child care, maybe a satellite office near your home.
You need to propose options that are solutions for you.  And if one doesn’t work, try another.

Know your bottom line. I wouldn’t work without enough money to have household help. It was a precondition for me being available at all times to the company—I needed household available at all times to me. This gives me the ability to create the type of flexibility I need in my life. At one point, things got so tenuous that I had a huge screaming match with one of my investors over my salary. But I didn’t budge. I had the confidence that I knew my line in the sand, and I wasn’t going to cross it.

Gear up for big risks. Screaming at my investors. And crying. And getting thrown out of the attorney’s office where we were. Those were big risks. I could have lost my company. But I didn’t. And I didn’t lose my salary either. But I took big risks. You never know what risks you’ll have to take to get what you want. But it’s safe to say that if you are aiming for flexibility in corporate America, you will need to risk your job, or your salary, to get what you want.

Be careful what you wish for. If you win the flexibility to do your work when you want to, and you make space in your day for your kids, you still did not get more time in your day. For example, it’s clear to me that there’s a surge of email from 9pm – 11pm eastern, as kids across America go to bed and parents jump online. So we’re better parents and engaged workers, but Oprah magazine reports that more than half of people who are married say they don’t have enough time for their spouses.

The first one was when I was twenty-seven. I was playing professional beach volleyball. I was playing volleyball eight hours a day and I spent two hours a day at the gym. I noticed that I was getting tired more easily, but I thought it meant I needed to train harder.

Then one weekend, a doctor friend on a visit saw me drop a plate one day, and a vase the next. I told her my hands just gave out because they were so tired.

She said I was anemic. Then she said, “Maybe you’re pregnant.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I have a regular period.”

It turns out, though, that you can have a regular period and still be pregnant.

And I was. Fourteen weeks.

My friend said, “Schedule the abortion now. You’re already late for it.”

I didn’t do anything. I was in shock. My boyfriend was in shock. Neither of us had ever had a pregnancy. I couldn’t believe the whole process actually worked, to be honest.

I told my mom I was pregnant. She said, “Get an abortion.”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t really thinking I had any choices. I didn’t have a job that could support a child. And I wasn’t sure if I was planning to marry my boyfriend, although we were living together. I knew that I had big ideas for my life and I hadn’t figured things out yet.

My mom got militant. “You’ll destroy your career possibilities.”

She riffed on this theme for a week, calling me every night. Her passion is understandable. My mom took a job when I was young because she hated being home with kids. She endured interview questions like, “Does your husband want you away from home working?” She was one of the first women to become an executive at her Fortune 500 company. She blazed trails so I could have career goals that required an abortion to preserve.

Here’s what else happened: Other women called. It turned out that many, many women I knew had had an abortion. This is not something women talk about. I mean, I had no idea how ubiquitous the procedure was, at least in my big-city, liberal, Jewish world.

Each of those women told me that I should get an abortion so that I could keep my options open. “You’re a smart girl. You can do anything with your life right now. Don’t ruin it.”

My boyfriend was laying low. He was no slouch when it came to pro-choice politics and he knew it was, ultimately, my decision.

But the minute I said I would get an abortion, he was driving me to Planned Parenthood.

You had to go once to set up the appointment, and then go back.

When I went back, I had a panic attack. I was on the table, in a hospital gown, screaming.

The nurse asked me if I was a religious Christian.

The boyfriend asked me if I was aware that my abortion would be basically illegal in seven more days.

I couldn’t stop screaming. I was too scared. I felt absolutely sick that I was going to kill a baby. And, now that I know more about being a mother, I understand that hormones had already kicked in to make me want to keep the baby. We left. No abortion.

My boyfriend started panicking by suddenly staying really late at work and going out with friends a lot. I stopped playing volleyball because I got tired so quickly.

People kept calling me: They said, “Think about how you’ll support the child. Think about what you’ll do if your boyfriend leaves you. You’re all alone in LA with no family. How will you take care of yourself?”

People gave me advice: Get a job. Once you have established yourself in a career, you’ll feel much better about having kids. Figure out where you fit in the world. Get a job, then get married, and then have kids.

I scheduled another abortion. But it was past the time when Planned Parenthood will do an abortion. Now it was a very expensive one at a clinic that seemed to cater to women coming from Christian countries in South America. I knew that if I did not go through with it this time, no one would do the abortion. I was too far along.

So I did it.

I went to sleep with a baby and woke up without one. Groggy. Unsure about everything. Everything in the whole world.

People think abortion is such an easy choice–they say, “Don’t use abortion as birth control.” Any woman who has had one will tell you how that is such crazy talk. Because an abortion is terrible. You never stop thinking about the baby you killed. You never stop thinking about the guy you were with when you killed the baby you made with him. You never stop wondering.

So the second time I got pregnant, I thought of killing myself. My career was soaring. I was 30 and I felt like I had everything going for me – great job, great boyfriend, and finally, for the first time ever, I had enough money to support myself. I hated that I put myself in the position of either losing all that or killing a baby.

I didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant. I knew what they’d say.

So I completely checked out emotionally. I scheduled the abortion like I was on autopilot. I told my boyfriend at the last minute and told him not to come with me.

He said forget it. He’s coming with me.

I remember staring at the wall. Telling myself to stop thinking of anything.

The doctor asked me, “Do you understand what’s going to happen?”

I said yes. That’s all I remember.

I got two abortions to preserve my career. To keep my options open. To keep my aspirations within reach.

I bought into the idea that kids undermine your ability to build an amazing career.

And here I am, with the amazing career.

But also, here I am with two kids. So I know a bit about having kids and a career. And I want to tell you something: You don’t need to get an abortion to have a big career. Women who want big careers want them because something deep inside you drives you to change the world, lead a revolution, break new barriers.

It doesn’t matter whether you have kids now or later, because they will always make your career more difficult. There is no time in your life when you are so stable in your work that kids won’t create an earthquake underneath that confidence.

I think about the men I was with when I had the abortions. They were not bad men. One is my ex-husband. So much of life is a gamble, and I think I might have had as good a chance of staying together with the first guy as I did with my ex-husband. And I am not sure that my life would have turned out worse if I had had kids early. I am not sure it would have turned out better. I’m not even sure it would have been that different.

You never know, not really. There is little certainty. But there are some certain truths: It’s very hard to have an abortion. And, there is not a perfect time to have kids.

And I wonder, are there other women out there who had abortions in the name of their career and their potential? What do those women think now?

I have a lot of doctors in my family and lots of friends who are doctors, so I’m reasonably familiar with the careers of doctors, and I’m astounded that we’re not talking about paying less for health care.

Why do doctors need to make so much money? The non-financial rewards for being a doctor are larger than almost any other profession. Except teaching.

There’s a reason we pay an almost non-living wage to teachers: It’s rewarding and meaningful and you do not need tons of schooling to do it.

So okay, there’s a shortage of teachers, but not by a lot. Because the trend today is to do meaningful work and work with civic duty. Teach for America is one of the most popular choices for college grads. So the salaries can’t be that out of whack for the job.

Also, the Institute for the Study of Labor says, “When teachers were offered cash rewards for good performance (measured by factors like grades and parental feedback) student scores on national exams significantly declined.” So I don’t think paying more to people with meaningful work actually gets a more meaningful performance from them.

Which means that it makes sense that we pay people for what the market demands. And we could fill medical schools twice over with all the candidates who didn’t get in. Don’t tell me they’re not smart enough. They passed organic chemistry. That’s fine for me.

So we should pay doctors a lot less. Those doctors who are motivated by helping people and doing good things for the world will stay. And those who want a lot more money can go to finance.

Oh. Wait. They can’t do that. Because the days of finance guys making tons of money for doing something that is really long hours and not helping anyone are over. So we should certainly also be done with guaranteeing people loads of money WHILE they do good things.

So doctors who were in it for the money will need to go to professions like VP of Intellectual Property at a Fortune 500 company where they can sue small entrepreneurs and ruin their lives in the name of corporate profits. A job like that is pretty certain to be a good living and the price you pay is that you don’t get to save the world.

It is all adult life. It is a trade-off. You get to do good things or you get paid a lot. It’s why moms don’t get paid. It’s why garbage men earn more than teachers. Why should doctors be any different?

The doctors who complain about this will talk about insurance (premiums will be lower if no one can pay: Duh). And they’ll complain about school loans (outrageously high, yes).

The cost of medical school is the obvious objection to paying doctors less. Actually, the cost is a joke. Research scientists are happier, on balance, than almost any other type of career. Teaching at med school is a great job. You solve interesting problems, and teach people to save lives, and you have great hours.

Those med school professors are totally overpaid. So make med school cheaper by paying the professors less. Then we can pay doctors less. You’ll lose the surplus of applicants each year, but who needs that big a surplus? This is a good step to starting a universal health care system.

Sure, health care probably won’t be as good as what we have now. For the insured, that is. But fifty million people will be able to go to a doctor who couldn’t under the current system.

And yes, I know, there will be a two-tier healthcare system where many of the top-notch specialists will only work for cash. But, newsflash: This already is happening in NYC. As the mom of two special needs kids, I saw all the best doctors in NYC, for a wide range of issues, and most did not take insurance. So we already have that system. Cutting pay to doctors across the board won’t create it. The only thing it will create is a way for poor people to get health care.

Last night she sang in the semi-finals, and what struck me most while watching her is how much we can learn about our own careers from watching Susan Boyle’s. For example.

Everyone loves to be a shepherd of talent.

The act of finding a mentor is actually the act of showing someone you have talent and they can help you find it. It’s very, very hard to land in the limelight on your own. So many studies of success – from Fortune 500 executives to startup entrepreneurs – all show that a key factor is finding people to help you navigate a system that requires many more skills than any one, single person could have.

If you ever wonder what you bring to someone who is mentoring you, look at the faces of the three judges when they realize (after four or five notes) that Susan is phenomenal. The joy on their faces is contagious. That’s a big reason people like to watch that video clip: the moment when you see someone is very talented is so rewarding. It’s a moment full of excitement and promise and you get to be a part of it because the person is asking you for help.

This is why mentoring is magical and electrifying to both sides. And seeing the moment on Britain’s Got Talent reminds me that I should continuously seek out mentors and show them I perform well with the help they give me.

You can only shine if you set the bar high.

Susan sang a very hard song: I Dreamed a Dream, from Les Miserables. Not that I know anything about opera. But after watching the video of her at least 50 times, I got curious about how other people sing the song, I Dreamed a Dream. Then I started seeing all the places the song can trip up a singer.

If you watch the clip 50 times, you catch Simon Cowell saying, “That’s a big song.” It’s an important thing – that she picked a big song. Because if you want to be seen as someone doing something big, you have to pick something big to do.

Seth Godin writes about The Dip. It’s the time when things look too hard. It’s the time when you are trying to do something big, and it is not happening, because doing something big doesn’t happen right away, it takes work. And it’s very hard to do a lot of work if you don’t know what will come of it.

Most people quit. That’s Seth Godin’s point: That you have to try something big, and you have to accept that anything big and huge requires you to have a dip – a point when you are wondering if it is worth it. And that’s where most people quit. For the most part, you cannot do something big without going through this process.

I think I’m in a dip right now. With my company. I am lucky, because I have Ryan Healy reminding me that we’re in the dip, doing something big, and we can’t quit. And I’m lucky because I have been in the dip twice before – when I struggled to get on the professional beach volleyball tour, and when I was trying to finish my novel and still did not know that I would eventually get a publisher.

So this is what I know about the dip. There is no big win if you don’t suffer through it. And the first part of the process is to pick a big song.

Settling for a day job does not destroy you.

We all love stories of early success. Child actors discovered in Mumbai, three-year-old girls whose singing makes you cry. In the tech industry, being a young founder is so legendary that founders have lied about how old they are. And in mathematics, it’s always news if someone discovers something later than age 30 because it so seldom happens.

We love the stories of early, magical success. So when we find ourselves having to take a day job we don’t love in order to do what we do love on the side – this is not the narrative we hope for in life.

But Susan Boyle is evidence that this narrative works as well. Huge talent can shine through at any age, and the world will respond. Susan Boyle did what so many people do who are not getting paid to do what they love. She kept singing, while she worked day jobs. She sang because she loved singing, and she got better and better and better.

A hallmark of talent is loving to practice. And Susan Boyle’s story is the narrative of the hard work that talent takes. Our lives are first, and foremost, about getting up every day and practicing what we love. What you get paid for, what you get honored for, that is secondary. And success comes for those who work hard.

]]> http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/05/26/career-lessons-from-susan-boyles-success/feed/ 66 http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/03/11/twentysomething-why-its-smart-to-quit-a-job-after-just-two-weeks-of-work/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/03/11/twentysomething-why-its-smart-to-quit-a-job-after-just-two-weeks-of-work/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:14:24 +0000 Penelope Trunk http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/?p=2258 This is a guest post from Jamie Varon. She's 23 years old. Her blog is called intersected.

Not too long ago, I started a new job, in which I moved my self from point A (college town) to point B (Bay Area). This was supposed to be my career launch. It took me about two weeks to admit to myself that I was unhappy. So I quit.

I had the security of knowing I could go back to my parents’ house to live. (Which, by the way, is such a good idea that 65% of new grads do it.) Here are five reasons why I am sure it was a smart decision to quit my job after just two weeks:

1. Your job performance will be terrible if you hate your job.

If you hate your job from the beginning, then you will never fully dedicate yourself. In fact, you'll resent both the company and yourself for staying at a job that you knew you didn't like early on.

I get it: You have this desire to prove to yourself that you are capable of sticking it out. Or you're worried that this makes you a complete failure and you have given up. So what? You learn from your failure. You learn from that mistake. You’ll end up quitting at some point soon, so why draw it out?

2. You'll have more respect for yourself if you respond to your needs.

Once I admitted to myself that I hated my job, I worried that if I didn't quit this job immediately, even if I had no backup plan, that I would be setting myself up to allow negative situations into my life. If you know that going to your job will make you stressed, unhappy, and angry, every single day, then continuing to go is being disrespectful to your well-being. The more you continue to disregard your own feelings, the further away you get from happiness.

When we're in our twenties we need to learn about who we are and what we like, so that we can find a work life we are passionate about. Staying in a job you hate doesn’t help.

3. You'll prove your commitment to passion and engagement at work.

Quitting that job after two weeks is actually one of my proudest moments. I think it shows that I have integrity and passion. I understand the fact that productivity comes more easily in the face of happiness. Quitting quickly is showing impatience for a meaningful work life. Everyone should be impatient for that.

Also, people who switching jobs regularly makes people more engaged in their work. This makes sense. If you stay in a job for a long stretch of time, your learning curve goes down and things do not feel as new and stimulating.

4. You'll do the company a favor.

If you stay unhappy at a job and then quit after, say, six months, the company will probably never know that you had hated your stint there. When you quit a job after two weeks, the company will notice and question what they had done to push you away so quickly. (A smart company, at least.)

Employees at, Apple, for example, produce the best products in the world because they are passionate about the company's mission. You are not helping the company by staying at a position you hate when someone else may be better suited for it who will, no doubt, excel, while you are just getting by. Do the company a favor and quit so they can reevaluate their training, that position, and their hiring strategy, so the next person doesn't want to jump ship after a week.

5. You'll set yourself up for success.

High performing employees in companies like GE, Proctor & Gamble and UBS all get to rotate through a wide range of jobs at the beginning of their career. This is because job-hopping is a great way to build skills early in one’s career. We should all have that chance. There are no rules that say you need to stay at a job that is not teaching you enough.

And there are no rules that say how long it takes a person to know a job is not right. But there is a rule for who succeeds and who doesn’t: People who have self-confidence, respect, good teamwork instincts, and a sense of when it’s time to cut their losses; these are the people who succeed. That’s why high-performers leave bad jobs after just two weeks at work.

This is a guest post from Jamie Varon. She's 23 years old. Her blog is called intersected.

]]> http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/03/11/twentysomething-why-its-smart-to-quit-a-job-after-just-two-weeks-of-work/feed/ 297 http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/02/06/how-to-build-a-career-as-an-artist/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/02/06/how-to-build-a-career-as-an-artist/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:24:31 +0000 Penelope Trunk http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/?p=2099 Here's a post for all the people who are trying to be artists. It is not a friendly post. I do not think that people who want to create art need to get paid to do it. Do you get paid to have sex? No. Same thing. You love it, but you just do it after work. And sometimes, if you are driven mad by it, you leave work in the middle of the day for it.

Treat art the same way, and you will stay sane. Really. Here are five things I would nag you about if you were talking with me about your burgeoning career as an artist:

1. You cannot do art if you are starving.
The starving artist routine is total bullshit. I know because I did it. Once you know that you are not going to make rent, you can't really make art. Because your sense of self-preservation insists that your brain focus on the possibility that you will be out on the street. Your brain cannot stop solving that problem long enough to solve the problem of what is truth and beauty.

Here are some things I did while I was becoming a writer: I ate only bagels because I didn't have enough money for anything else and then I got anemic and had to go to the doctor but I didn't have health insurance so I had to lie and say I did in order to get the iron pills I needed so that I didn't pass out from exhaustion the moment I woke up in the morning. Believe me, I was not making great art during this period.

2. Art emanating from a black hole is a choice.
There's a reason that Jean-Michel Basquiat's paintings look like horror films: Because his life was a crack-house horror film. And there's a reason that Picasso is tearing apart voluptuous women in gorgeous surroundings: That's what he did in real life.

So don't kid yourself: Your art reflects your surroundings, and you can live like a pauper, but that limits the range of your art.

During my art days, I did not go out with friends. Ever. Because I didn't even have enough money to go to a coffee shop. And I was always cold because I lived in Boston and didn't have a winter coat. At many points I did not have a home, so I just sort of carried my laptop around and wrote and hoped that something would come up by the end of the day. And I almost never had clean clothes because I didn't have money to buy detergent.

So I wrote stories, every day, about not seeing anyone, and my mentor would say things like, "How about adding a character so that the narrator can have a conversation?" And that would strike me as a revolutionary idea.

3. Real artists will make art no matter what.
You do not need a studio, or a desk, or peace and quiet. Really. Because making art comes from a place that you cannot stop. People who need to make art make art no matter what.

Do you know how many blog posts I throw out? Maybe two a week. Because sometimes something happens and I absolutely have to write about it, and I see, from the beginning, that there's no way I'll be able to relate it to careers, so it's going to end up in the blogging trash can. But I write it anyway.

Do you know Christo and Jeanne-Claude? Wait. Here, look at some photos. The guy is nuts. He thinks so big that it makes him crazy. He's been making plans to put up cloth all over Central Park for 26 years. He can't stop himself. Finally, he did it. But who knew if it would ever happen? This is what I mean. If you need to do art, you just go there. Nothing stops you.

So if you think you're an artist and you are not making art now, but you think that in the right circumstance you'd make art, you are lying to yourself. I'm sorry. But it's true. Unless you are starving. If you are starving, see point number one: You need to get a job.

4. You do not need to quit your day job.
Are you making money and you're wondering if you should quit your job to do art full time? Take this test: Did you marry rich? Do you have a trust fund? Do you have reliable buyers for almost everything you produce? If you did not answer yes to any of these, then keep your day job.

Don't tell me it's crushing your soul. This whole blog is about how your soul does not depend on your job or your boss or your paycheck. Click on some links and read them.

Also, most corporate jobs can be creative outlets because businesses solve problems. So if you are an inherently creative thinker, you probably bring that to whatever job you have. You can't stop yourself.

5. You are not a better artist if you can do it full time.
I don't want to see snooty comments on this post about how great you are for being able to support yourself with your art. Because I can do that too. And you know what? I was not a worse writer when I could not support myself. The only difference between artists making money and artists not making money is that the first group is better at business. And there is no evidence that artists who are better at business make better art.

Do you want to know if you're going to be good at earning money from art? Take this test about networking from UpMo and Pepperdine University. The test will tell you how good you are at networking. And if you are not good at this test, you are not going to be good at selling your art, because the days of discovering someone with a sawed-off ear in an insane asylum are over. You need to market yourself. Do you want to know why there are so many crappy films in the world? Because there are so many great networkers who want to direct.

So everyone can stop being a snob about asking people how much money they make from their art. And everyone can stop thinking that the be-all-end-all is to quit the day job and do art full time.

Do you want to know how to be an artist? Make art. Do it because you need to do it. Because you think you will die if you don't do it. Stop making it a career problem. It's not. And, I leave you with one of my favorite posts, that I never get to link to, about me making myself crazy being an artist.

1. Take time to figure out what you love to do.

When I graduated from college, I was shocked to find out that I just spent 18 years getting an education and the only jobs offered to me sucked. Everything was some version of creating a new filing system for someone who is important.

Often bad situations bring on our most creative solutions. And this was one of those times: I asked myself, “What do I want to do most in the world, if I could do anything?” I decided it was to play volleyball, so I went to Los Angeles to figure out how to play on the professional beach circuit.

I spent my days on the courts, and late nights at the gym, and in between, I worked odd jobs in bookstores. And then I realized that the other thing I wanted to do was read. I had been so stifled in school being told what to read all the time. It was thrilling to be able to read whatever I wanted.

I wasn't making very much money. Sometimes I couldn't pay rent, and my landlord hated me. And sometimes I couldn't afford to wash my clothes and I pretended that bikinis never get dirty. But, in fact, you really don't need much money to figure out what you love to do, you just need time and space and a willingness to keep yourself busy until something sticks.

2. Take time to figure out what you can get paid for.

It took me a few years to navigate the arcane hierarchy of Southern California beach volleyball, but I finally played on the professional tour. For a summer. And what I found was that I am not nearly as competitive as the top players. I was, at one point, ranked 17, but I can tell you that I never cared as much about my rank as the other women.

What I did excel at, though, was winning sponsors, which, on some level, is what professional sports is all about anyway. I always had better sponsors even than women higher than me in the ranks, and I won partners and trainers by dint of my ability to attract sponsors.

But the truth about professional volleyball is that it is a really tough life. The eight hours a day on the beach starts getting old, and so do the Budweiser commercials I did (totally not fun) to manage to scrape together enough money to support myself.

So I thought to myself: Who is using the skills I have to make money? And I landed on marketing. And I had this boyfriend who was going to hire someone to do marketing at his Internet startup, so I volunteered to do it for free, to get something on my resume. And then I got a job.

3. Watch people around you to figure out who is happy.

I ended up having a pretty big job at a Fortune 500 company running their web site. Don't get me wrong. It was the earliest days of the Internet, and it actually took more people to redesign my blog recently than it did to launch that Fortune 500 site in the early 90’s.

But anyway, I started climbing the ladder and tons of people wanted to mentor me, to help me get to where they were. And they told me they were happy, but when I watched them, day in and day out, I realized that the people at the top of the ladder were not nearly as happy as I had expected them to be. They tucked their kids into bed from their phones at their desk. They were overdressed constantly and they had hair-trigger tempers for topics that seemed inconsequential to me.

So I went to where coolness seemed to be: At startups.

Now that I'm on my third startup, I can tell you with certainty that if you looked at my life you would not see that I am happy. Running a startup is really high risk and really difficult, and entrepreneurs work longer hours than anyone else. But I'm almost always there to eat diner with my kids, because I control my own hours.

So the final step of finding out where you should be is looking at everyone's life with a clear lens. Adult life is really hard. Finding out who we are, and finding someone to share our life with, and having kids and still having a life, and being able to pay for all of that: Impossible, really.

So you look around and see who is doing what part of that well. And you pick the sacrifices that they made. Because no life is perfect, but all lives have some things to offer. Be clear on what you're choosing and what you're giving up, and don't pick anyone's life if they tell you they have everything: they're lying.

1. Take care of yourself—have the basics covered.
The most important thing about making meaningful work is that if you are always worried about paying rent, it's very hard to add goodness back to the rest of the world. Giving back to the world requires a sense of personal well-being and stability that only people who have a roof over their head can manage.

Back when I was doing what most of you would call meaningful work, I was totally preoccupied with budgeting my meager salary to make sure I didn't run out of money at the end of the month. At the end of that stint, when I landed in the hospital for a kidney infection, it turned out I was severely anemic, and I'm sure it was because I had such a poor diet from making so little money.

So before you worry about meaningful work, you need to be able to support yourself. Your first job in life is to figure out how to do that. It takes a while. You actually have to figure out what you are good at and what you like doing. This doesn't mean you have to dedicate your life to that work. But it means that you are learning and growing, and someone values the level of skill you have to pay you a wage with which you can support yourself, and others you might need to support.

2. Take care of your work—make sure your job doesn't suck.
Work doesn't give your life meaning. The idea that your happiness correlates to your satisfaction with your work is misguided. What you need from work is to make sure it's not undermining your ability to create sanity in your life. Work is a way to get sanity, to make sure you are growing and you feel secure while you do it. Here's what you need from a job to get that:

• A short, predictable commute
• Workflow you can manage
• Clear goals that are challenging
• Two co-workers you're close friends with

Once you have those things in your job, then it is not up to your job to create meaning in your work, it is up to you.

3. Make a difference in peoples' lives—from any type of job.
The most competent managers are doing meaningful work every day. Management is one of the best perches in the world for doing meaningful work, because you can help people to figure out what they are good at, what they are doing with their days, and what makes them tick. You can help people craft a life.

One of the most rewarding moments in Brazen Careerist is when I read this post by Monica O'Brien. She wrote about the teamwork and personal growth that went into our most recent (and sort-of-shaky) launch. The biggest difference I made in someone's life that week was to give everyone the opportunity to do something they had never done before, and watch them learn.

The other thing you can do at work is help your co-workers. The best workers in corporate America are people who get their work done fast—probably not perfectly, but in time to pick their head up and wander around the office and figure out who needs help. Lots of people will need help. Someone will be lost, someone will be lonely, someone will be overwhelmed. Then look at your own arsenal of talents. Which one is well suited for one of the problems you see people facing? Use your skills to help people overcome their obstacles.

It's true that it's not exactly part of your job, but this is the office politics people have been talking about forever. The office politics that gets you ahead. You see, office politics is about being nice, and being nice is about infusing meaning in work, and everyone around you will get more meaning from their work if you are making your own work more meaningful.

So the bottom line is that any work can be meaningful if you understand that it's your job to help people.

The meaning will come after you help yourself first. Think of what the flight attendant tells everyone before takeoff: if you are traveling with someone who needs special assistance, put your own oxygen mask on first, and then help someone else. But if you don't get your own mask on, you can't help anyone.

So stop using your search for meaning as an excuse for not getting a job. Life is loaded with meaning, if you would just start living it. And, as an adult, that means engaging in ANY kind of work that we can do well.