Is It Time To Pivot in Your Creative Career?

Whether you are still trying to find your footing or decades deep into a creative career, sooner or later a basic question comes for us all: Should you continue down the same path, or is it time to take a turn?

Let’s face it, a career in the arts is downright maddening. It’s a darn near impossible journey even for the most talented. And even once you put in the hard work and are fortunate enough to get the breaks that come from that hard work, you will never really reach a point where you feel like you’ve “made it.” Now, I won’t even begin to define what “made it” means. That answer is different for everyone asking the question. Whatever goal you set for yourself at the beginning of your career can only be defined by you. But the thing no one tells you at the beginning of your journey is that, more than likely, your destination will change multiple times along the way.

Part of this is practical. As math dictates, along with our careers progressing, we are also advancing in age. Some of us have advanced more than others, as you might be able to tell from the increasing number of gray hairs sneaking into my beard. But as we get older, assuming we aren’t living in some hermetically sealed cocoon, it is almost certain that our dreams will continue to progress as we are exposed to more and more of the world. So, in essence, we grow to want more as we learn how much more there is to want. So, even if you set lofty goals for yourself starting out, once you start obtaining a few of those goals, you’ll realize there’s still so much more left to obtain.

Our goals also change because the world around us changes. I mentioned in a previous article how my career started out because I dreamt of seeing the films I was making debut on the big screen to audiences around the world and the stills I was taking plastered over billboards from coast to coast. Luckily, I’ve had both of those experiences in my lifetime. But decades after those dreams were established in my mind, I now live in a world where the majority of films are going to debut on a streaming service instead of inside a theater and where far more people will see my photographs on social media than will ever see them hanging above Times Square. To be honest, I find both of those shifts somewhat depressing. But the world is the world, and we can only play the game put in front of us. So, as a result, we are forced to adjust our goalposts according to the lay of the terrain.

Other times, we can feel our shifts being dictated to us. We’ve reached a point in our career where the fish just aren’t nibbling the way they used to. Or maybe there’s still plenty of interest in our work, but secretly, we just aren’t feeling the same charge from our art as we used to. It’s not that we don’t still love it. It’s just that, without that guttural drive to create, we begin to wonder if all the struggle is still worth it.

It’s a complicated question. It’s not only practical but emotional. In the previous example, it’s not a matter of your business falling off. It’s you no longer receiving the same amount of joy from the process. Which is more important? Money is obviously a necessity for most of us. But how is doing an artistic career you no longer love any different from having a day job? Now, let’s take that example one step further. If you are fortunate enough to have an established career in a creative field, it has no doubt come with a great amount of hard work—investment both financial and emotional. Years of sacrifices have been made to get to where you are. So, even if you no longer feel connected to your art, wouldn’t leaving it behind feel like a betrayal of your own hard work and sacrifice? I know it’s silly, but those are the types of thoughts that will creep through your head at 2 o’clock in the morning and are often hard to let go.

Ultimately, at some point—now or well into the future—you will find yourself asking if you are still on the right path. You will wonder if the way forward might actually entail a side-step. You might (definitely will) wonder if perhaps you made the wrong choice at the very beginning of your career and have wasted all the time you spent building up your current position. Well, it’s unlikely you made a mistake originally. You made whatever choice was right for you at the time. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t time for a change.

But how do you know if it’s time for a change? How do you know if you genuinely should shift direction or if you are, instead, just temporarily burned out and simply need a break to recharge? That’s an impossible question for anyone but you to answer. But there are a few things you may want to keep in mind that could help you make your decision.

Is Your Goal Still Practical?  

I am a big fan of classic Hollywood—the 1930s, 40s, 50s. And you’ll often see a scene in an old movie where a group of women are employed as telephone operators, sitting in endless bays, connecting and disconnecting telephone calls manually through a switchboard. Well, needless to say, telephone technology has come a long way since the 1930s, and a career as a switchboard operator is no longer practical (except maybe as an actress playing one in a movie). So, if your dream was to be a telephone operator, you would have no choice but to pivot.

Likewise, one of my dreams as a photographer was to make a lot of money flying off to exotic destinations to shoot long-form magazine editorials that would be published around the globe. Well, even the most bullish fan of magazines would have to accept that, in the current environment, making a great deal of money purely shooting editorials isn’t really all that practical. Especially given the dwindling number of print magazines still remaining. So, you would be forced to pivot, regardless of how much you love shooting for magazines.

Do You Just Need A Break?

I’ve used this analogy before, but it continues to hold. There was a movie called Indecent Proposal that came out in 1993. It had the very salacious premise of Robert Redford offering cash-strapped Woody Harrelson and his wife, Demi Moore, a million dollars. The only catch was that, to get the million dollars, Harrelson had to let Redford sleep with his wife. We’re not even going to go into the marriage counseling necessary to address that question. Rather, I’ll point to one of the catchphrases from the film that goes something like: “If you love someone, set them free. If they come back to you, they are yours forever. If they don’t, they were never yours to begin with.”

Sometimes, when you feel your passion draining away for your art, it doesn’t mean that you need to pivot your career. It just means that you need to take a break. While I am a proud Gen X’er and phrases like “self-care” still seem like something of a foreign language to me, there is such a thing as just burning out. The 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week effort it takes to succeed can only be sustained for so long before your body and mind will just need a break. Often, when you lose interest in that which you are most passionate about, it’s the result of you loving it so much that it has taken all you’ve got—not a signal that you don’t love it.

I’ve taken this to heart multiple times throughout my career. Just step away for a moment. Give yourself some distance from your passion. If you find that it’s easy to let go, it may be a signal that you’ve reached a point in life where you’re ready to move on. Conversely, if that passion just continues to stick to you, or recedes into the background yet continues to gnaw away at the back of your mind even when you’ve tried to move on, then it might be a good indication that what you really needed was a vacation, not a new career.

Pivoting Versuss Retiring

Often, we are afraid to change our trajectory because we think of it as a black-or-white decision, as if the slightest alteration in our plans is a signal that we’ve failed in our ambition. But, in reality, a mere slight adjustment can often make all the difference. You don’t have to give up your photography career altogether. Perhaps it’s just time to shift your niche and discover new challenges. You might still love the process of taking pictures. It’s just that you’ve said all you need to say in one specific area. So, a slight alteration in your subject matter or visual approach may be enough to spur on an entirely new wave of passion.

Changing your career path doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. It can be a slight deviation from your original concept that helps you adjust to newfound market forces. It can be trying a new avenue to help rekindle your creative fire. Or, it can be a larger acceptance that this particular season of your life has come to an end, and it really is time to try something new.

But just like the changing of the seasons, spring always comes after winter. So, be aware that when it comes to artistic pursuits, constant change isn’t one of the bugs—it’s one of the features. Embrace your growth and keep your fire forever burning.