Try being a dilettante before changing careers

Try being a dilettante before changing careers Did you ever notice that in most Starbucks there is art on the wall? In hyperly competitive New York City, where I used to live, the waiting list for putting art on the wall at Starbucks was two years. Really. But I signed up. I know, youre thinking, Penelope was an artist? The answer is, sort of: paint and collage. And every once in a while, someone would say, Do you sell those? and Id say, Okay, yeah, Ill sell one. And then Id think, Well, in that case, then Im an artist. So I did what other artists do when they are beginning. I put my name on the list to put my art on the walls at Starbucks. And a long time later, there was a message on my voicemail from the manager of Starbucks asking when I would hang my art. The answer was never. There are two ways to do art: by yourself, in your home, for no one but yourself, or in public, to be a rip-roaring success. Of course, I wanted the second. I tried to want the first, but I keep wondering how well I could do if I tried really hard with the art. And then I thought, if youre going to be a critical success, you probably dont want to be known as the person hanging her stuff in Starbucks. Starbucks is for dilettantes. I think I was a dilettante five years ago, when I put my name on the list. But during the two years it took to get my name to the top of the list, I decided I wanted to be more serious. I had started calling my art collage, and I glued stuff back on when it fell off instead of just throwing it out. I recognized that people who are serious do not let high school kids pick at their paintings in the back corner of a coffee shop. When youre on the cusp of dilettantism, but you want to be taken seriously, its embarrassing. Because you still look like a joker, but you look like an extreme joker because youre a joker who no longer wants to admit to being a joker. I remember the point when I decided that I was a serious writer: I reorganized the folders on my desktop so that the Writing folder was inside my Work folder instead of below it. But I didnt do that until I had been supporting myself writing for more than a year. Its a big step to take yourself seriously. The move away from dilettantism is slow, and nervous. Today all I can muster in the art department is to tell Starbucks no. But I know its a step in the right direction because research conducted by Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, in France, shows that the most effective way make a serious move in your life is to do it in a not-so-serious way. Its more effective to try something out for a few hours a week. That way if you dont like your new self, you can go back to your old self. And if you like the two hours, try two more. Or maybe use your vacation time to test out your new self. I did that. I told myself I was an artist and I set aside a week to pretend I was a full-time Very Serious Artist. And this is what happened: I wrote. Because Im a writer, not a visual artist. But still, I like the idea of doing art. I just have to figure out how it fits into my life. So Im taking the advice of Ibarra and imagining myself in different situations until I find one that fits. Change in ones life does not require a career change. In fact, a career change should be last. After lots of experimenting with small steps in an effort to find out who you really are. Thats how I found out, again, that Im a writer.