Mid-Life and Starting Over

I am 41. I am a creative person. I have a BFA in graphic design, and a license in cosmetology. I had given up my career to be with my husband. Down the road of my professional experience I found myself doing everything but what I loved to do, create.
 
I am now looking towards the future in hopes of rekindling my affair with art but am not sure how to jump start myself into the field. There is something said about being a seasoned professional with no real experience. What I lack in technical skills I gained in the hard knocks of life.
 
Any suggestions on how to start over?

Answer

Congratulations on taking control from this day forward!  It sounds like you’ve had some diverse training and, while you didn’t elaborate specifically, you also have some professional experience.  

Your question is actually two-fold, and recognizing that there are two parts is the key to get started:

1)    You want to rekindle your affair with art; and
2)    You want to jumpstart yourself into a creative field.

Rekindling the passion and starting the creative career are separate because following artistic passion does not necessarily require doing art for a living, and being in a creative business doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’ll be doing satisfies your artistic desires.  

In other words, rekindle your affair with art by doing the art (let’s say design-related).  This entails setting aside time for sketching, modeling, visiting museums, taking a design class, etc.  Don’t worry about how this translates to a job search.  Just focus on reigniting the passion and discovering what area specifically within the art is of interest.  You may discover that your passion is different than what you thought.  Interests and tastes change.  That’s fine but you need time and space to discover that without having to worry about your career.

Separately, set aside time to explore creative careers.  This means identifying people in the design industry to network with, joining design trade groups, attending design conferences, reading design publications.  This means looking at design companies where you might want to work, checking their job postings to see what types of positions are out there, and assessing where you are v. where you want to be.  Then you can create a strategy to get from where you are to your dream career.

In rekindling your passion you may discover that you don’t want to do that for a living.  In that case, you might explore different creative careers.  Read biographies to get ideas.  Read business magazines to see what industries might have some creative innovations happening.  Advertising, marketing, media/ new media are not the only places that attract creatives.  You can be doing creative work at a bank.  You also might decide that rekindling the art as a hobby is enough, and you look at non-creative industries for your next career move.

There are many examples of people who hit their stride later in life, even in creative careers – Estelle Getty of Golden Girls fame waited till her sons were in high school before reigniting her acting career.  That said, your artistic passion does not have to be your livelihood.  You can rekindle the art or pursue a creative career or both.  These are two separate goals and should be pursued independently.

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