Excerpt 10.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Chapter Nine: Going for the Gold

As creatives, we don't always acknowledge our power, and therefore fail to harness it to its fullest potential. We forget that we are infinite beings with infinite power to adapt and create. Once we get in the groove of making money and meeting the basic business needs, it's easy to fall into the trap of playing small. By playing small, I mean not playing bigger. Upping your own game when you work for yourself is a challenge. Why make life more difficult than it needs to be? Why risk fear and rejection when you don't really need to? Why tempt fate unnecessarily when you already have a good thing going?

In the artistic world, gold may mean different things: an Oscar, an Emmy, a Nobel Peace Prize, a revenue figure, or a mint 1970 Chevy with spinners. Ultimately it’s up to you to define your gold.

WHY YOU SHOULD STOP DOING WHAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING

In our field of smoke and mirrors, it's important to have something new to talk about. New projects create momentum, which ultimately attract new and bigger, higher-paying clients. If you're playing the same old game over and over it’s going to get stale and it's likely that you will be replaced with someone cheaper. Going for big clients helps to sharpen your tools and make life easier in the long run by challenging you a little bit here and there in the short run.

For freelancers, clients change over time. Their needs change, technology changes and their willingness to pay a premium for your services changes. Getting out in the world and staying connected is important. It's easy to get stuck doing the same client jobs and making just enough money. Repeat clients are necessary. However, banking your entire business on them can be dangerous.

In other words, continuing to do exactly what you have been doing is the biggest risk you can take. You need to hedge your future to some extent. The world is evolving and you must, too. Upleveling is the antidote to not falling behind the times. It's the growth hack you've been looking for.

Executive coach Loren Margolis stresses the importance of becoming familiar with discomfort in order to grow in your business. She recommends starting with small activities to challenge yourself. Choose a different thing to do each day that scares you. Repeat for one year. What was once extremely uncomfortable becomes a piece of cake over time. Timothy Ferriss takes it a step further and recommends taking this experiment into the public eye: Negotiate for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, lie down in a public space for 10 seconds, or hug a random person. Discomfort is a muscle that requires daily exercise. The more you practice, the more easily you will be able to adjust and thrive in new and unfamiliar circumstances.

When we are out in the marketplace, seeing what clients want and are willing to pay for, we can refine our service offerings and take existing clients on the ride with us. We never know what a potential client will go for until we try. Test-marketing new services and new service strategies is key in a world that has become so automated and where clients can go almost anywhere in the world and hire people to do the same thing for a lot less.

Basic services from marketing to accounting to personal assisting can be outsourced to many countries around the world for pennies on the dollar. Unfortunately, this now includes a lot of creative services. We know that to some extent you get what you pay for. The bean counters, however, see it differently. It's imperative to separate yourself from everyone else that does (or appears to do) the same thing that you do. It's important to distinguish your level of experience and the tangible outcomes from such experiences.

BECOME AN EXPERT

It's crucial to not just provide a creative service, but a larger strategy behind it that meshes directly with your clients' goals. Strategic creatives offer something that others cannot. This requires knowledge of the client's business and practices. Once you've achieved this, you become indispensable.

Pitching new ideas and services that deliver a strategic outcome makes you an asset to the success of the proposed project. People thrive on ideas, and non-creatives lack the tools necessary to conceive them, budget them and implement them. You are providing a tremendous service to a client if you know his or her business or need and can provide creative solutions that will provide the desired outcome.

When you promote yourself to the rank of chief creative officer, you're taking weight off the client’s back and fueling the long-term success of the project. You're also creating a platform for growing your service offerings and expanding the relationship. You are building trust and your brand as an expert.

Becoming an expert versus a creative-service provider is a game changer. Who would you rather have taking your picture, your cousin with an iPhone or Annie Leibovitz? Most of us would choose Annie Leibovitz. We want a portrait that transcends time and elevates us to a new level. A portrait that means something and has value.

Transforming yourself into an expert involves determination and commitment, but I guarantee you are already closer than you think. An expert is defined as anyone who has 10,000 or more hours of experience in his or her work. How many do you have? How many do you need? How can we start positioning your experience to be more in line with an expert?

The first step is owning who you are and what you do. Have the confidence that you are an expert and are offering a unique service. Then look at areas that may require a little bit of upgrading and upleveling. Make a list of what you want to do and how you want to be seen. Narrow down the field that you are looking at. Put it in the most divisible terms possible.

Let's take a look at all the areas of our lives and business that we can control and think of ways to uplevel them. Even thinking about expanding your business can result in positive mojo that helps to move you toward your goal. Simply deciding to not do the same thing you've been doing in the same way is a start.

The next step is to take serious inventory of your life and business as it is. What do you love? What do you not love? What energizes you? What feels stale? What do you want more of? Money, success, fame, awareness connection? What do you want less of? Bitchy clients, long work days, no time for vacation or personal interests?

Be honest and clear about where you are and ideally where you want to go. If there were no restrictions on resources or time, how would you elevate your business? I've outlined ideas below to help get you started and hopefully jog your creative mojo into finding your upgraded flow. As mentioned, gold may mean different things – an industry statue, a number in your bank account, or gold lamé pajamas. And in order to get it, you gotta define it.

Excerpt 9.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Chapter Eight: Staying Inspired

From his fifth-floor room at The Savoy London, painter Claude Monet produced dozens of misty landscapes, including the famed Waterloo Bridge canvases currently in the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection. It turns out that I’m not the only artist with a penchant for travel and a propensity to seek inspiration from luxury hospitality. New York Times reporter Stephanie Strasnick says, “Monet is part of a long tradition of artists – including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Andy Warhol – who found inspiration during their hotel stays.”

Picasso spent three months in Hotel de Russie in Rome with poet Jean Cocteau. The two occupied adjoining rooms and were in Rome to stage the first-ever Cuban ballet. Surrealist painter Dalí spent every winter for 40 years in room 1610 at The St. Regis New York. He booked a second room in this luxury Manhattan hideaway as his studio. Similarly, Hôtel Beau Rivage in the South of France housed many artists and writers who created works there, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henri Matisse, Friedrich Nietzsche and Anton Chekhov.

Inspiration can come in many places and forms. I wish I could say that I can easily find inspiration in a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates, but for me it’s not that simple. Instead, I find it in an obscure journey to Southeast Asia, Tanzania or Brazil. It always has to involve travel. I love an amazing dinner, music, a theater show, ballet, and a great book. Sometimes getting up in the mountains for a hike or a kick-ass yoga class does the trick. Sometimes it's a spa day, a weekend away, or a wild night out with friends. Practically anything can be a source of inspiration. It doesn't have to be a fancy luxury property or profound in any way. It’s just important to feed your soul, find joy in what you do, and reap the true rewards of being an artist.

Staying inspired may feel like a luxury, especially with all the other external stresses you may have to endure. It is not. It is just as necessary as paying your taxes and your rent. The lack of inspiration can eat away at you slowly, day by day, sucking the life out of you and everything that you do.

In a linear world, it's important to schedule time to do things you love as a part of your business practice. Oftentimes, we leave this for our “spare time,” which never comes, and we find ourselves without creative fuel when we need it most. As we talked about in Chapter Four, infusing these areas into our daily routine can give us a more robust, actionable plan that keeps us better fulfilled and better able to create on demand.

When things are very busy, we tend to wear ourselves down, often because we lack the resources to delegate tasks to others. The “wearing down” aspect of this lifestyle is an inspiration assassin. It's important to put self-care ahead of jobs, clients and anything else that looks like it is more important. It's too easy to overwork as an entrepreneur. By doing so, you do everyone a disservice, and your ability to produce dwindles.

PROTECTING THE CROWN JEWELS

Inspiration is like a golden egg, the crown jewel of creativity that needs protection and polish. Not just once in a while, but all the time. Imagine the Yoni egg of creativity that is held close to your heart. If we can take this aspect seriously, indulge ourselves in the assets needed to protect our inspired self, and ward off evil naysayers, our work is done. It is literally done. That's all we have to do to stay in the flow, and believe and respect ourselves enough to know that living a creative, inspired, entrepreneurial life is no BS.

It requires inputs, and those inputs are always going to be different than the inputs in the corporate (linear) world. Applying their rules to our game is ultimately a forfeit. It's throwing in the towel and waving the white flag. We need to step up and take control of our energetic space and beliefs that enable us to do what we do.

There are two main steps in this process:

1.) Cultivating curiosity and inspiration

2.) Limiting activities and interactions that decrease inspiration and disempower you

CULTIVATING CURIOSITY + INSPIRATION

The first step is being aware or becoming more aware of what inspires you, what you are curious about, random interests and questions you'd like to explore. If this has been somewhat absent in your creative life, you may want to consider walking around with a notepad during the day so you can take notes as ideas pop up.

Leadership and personal mastery guru Robin Sharma offers clients 49 ways to get inspired. My favorites are: read biographies of lives greatly lived, stop watching the news, record your ideal day in your journal, visit a new city, discover a new restaurant, and watch the movie Searching for Sugar Man.

Once you become aware of what you'd like to explore, you can start scheduling daily and weekly activities to support that interest. What makes your heart race, makes you smile, empowers you, increases your energy, makes you happy, makes you forget about time altogether? What would you do if time and money were limitless? Those answers will help you.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

·      reading

·      time alone doing nothing

·      spending time in nature

·      art (music/theater/fine art)

·      visioning (creating a vision board or vision journal)

·      expressing gratitude

·      learning

·      cooking

·      writing

·      spending time with friends/colleagues

·      exercising

·      brainstorming

·      indulging in your favorite things

·      travel/adventure

·      purging

·      decluttering

LIMITING FORCES OF EVIL

Similarly, in step two, we begin to take notice of what decreases our energy.

What makes you feel bad, disempowers you, depresses you, makes you sad, irritated or angry? What kills the creative fire inside of you? Noting these things can be a surprising process. I found that I was unaware of how many things made me feel negatively and how often I did not limit these activities and actually moved toward them. Once we start to feel badly, we often magnify the sentiment by finding other people/places/thing to maintain the status quo. The same is true of positive emotions, hence the need to keep things on the up and up!

Here are some factors that may reduce your energy and leave you feeling disempowered:

·      negative people

·      aesthetically displeasing environments

·      abrasive sound

·      linear-thought-centric environments

·      media

·      social media

·      traffic

·      crowded environments

·      confined spaces

·      technology

Excerpt 8.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Chapter Seven: Selling Yourself

The social currency of personality is something we often overlook or undervalue, yet it is a major factor in getting hired in the creative world. People need to like you. Oftentimes this can even supersede talent. Liking you, feeling understood, and resonating with the type of work you do are much bigger factors than anything in your portfolio. Attunement and similarity help a client to trust you and internally promote you to others on the team who likely have to justify a hefty budget for your existence.

People who hire creatives don't just want a job done, they want an experience. Sometimes they want to live vicariously through you. Other times, they want to esape the office and take a vacation in your studio. Knowing what attracts clients to you most is huge. With that intelligence, you can craft a sales strategy that looks and feels nothing like a sales strategy. It becomes a seamless conversation that requires little to no effort.

Designer Frank Lloyd Wright was the king of immodesty. He sold himself often and unabashedly as “the world’s greatest architect.” He explained, “Early in life, I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.” His air of self-importance and pomposity paid major dividends just as his notoriety fueled public interest his work. In the end, Wright’s self-generated narrative won out; he is consistently cited today as “America’s greatest architect.”

We've previously discussed the power of being able to state, “I am the only artist in the world who does X." This may seem like an impossible task. After all, how do you really know that you are the only one in the world who can do something? You don't. But you can deduce through internet searching how many or how few people there are in your genre and keep narrowing it down. This level of specificity is important.

We live in a globalized world where there is a perception that there are far more photographers, graphic designers, artists, etc. than there actually are. The illusion of unlimited abundance in creative human capital inevitably drives down our perceived value. The client mentality is, “If it doesn’t work out with you, if the price isn't right, then we'll just hire someone else, one of the million other creatives out there.” It's a little harder to say, “Oh, we'll just find another catsuit photographer who will do it for less.”

The cure for this ailment is defining yourself more specifically or finding your niche. Niche marketing, or “micromarketing,” essentially will reduce your competition and increase your visibility and exclusivity, and reduce your marketing costs because you automatically generate better word-of-mouth sales. Digital experts at ThriveHive say that with niche marketing “a business is choosing to play to its strengths and highlight them for the people with whom it will resonate the most.”

Anyone who has hired or searched for creatives in specific areas knows firsthand how difficult it is to find the right person for a project. It's not because there are so many, it's actually because there are so few that meet the criteria for the project and have a style that resonates well with the material or is the right fit for the budget.

While there may indeed be many who can technically do the work, there are too few in reality who have the right vision and background experience to develop the project with the appropriate style. Also, not all creatives have the same capacity to meet a particular timeline. This is an exceptional talent that is undervalued in the market. The ability to produce a final outcome within a given time, no matter what, is something that only seasoned professionals tend to excel at.

In order to sell who you are, you need to know who you are, and more importantly who you are not. If you’re positioning yourself as doing “everything,” people will compute nothing of what you do. Marketing expert Al Reis argues “The secret lies not so much in positioning yourself in the market – but more so in positioning yourself in the customer’s mind.” The clearer you are on this, the easier it will be. It may take a bit of work getting to know yourself and, ideally, getting more familiar with how others view you. Your friends, family and clients can help with this.

WHEN YOU HAVE CLARITY:

·      Clients find and connect with you immediately.

·      Clients hire you faster with less haggling on fees.

·      Clients are more confident in you and the work you are producing.

·      You have more creative freedom to do what you do.

·      You get paid on time.

·      Your life is a dreamsicle.

WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE CLARITY:

·      Clients are constantly eyeing up your competition and cross-negotiating.

·      Projects require longer lead times and more meetings.

·      Clients micromanage you and your workflow.

·      Clients haggle more on fees.

·      You have less freedom to do your job the way you want to do it.

·      Clients are more likely to complain about the final product/service.

·      Collecting final payment becomes more difficult.

THE LOVE VERSUS HATE EXERCISE

Figure out who you are not. Journal these questions:

What do you hate?

What annoys you?

What do you dislike most in others?

Then flip it around:

What do you love?

What inspires you?

What pulls at you emotionally?

What do you love doing?

What adjectives would you use to describe yourself and your work?

How would others describe you?

If you don’t know, ask.

Clients with core values not in harmony with your own spell problems. Don't be afraid of stating exactly who you are and who you are not. You're not trying to be something you're not, therefore you excel at who you are and what you do. It is an ultimate trust builder.

YOUR DISTINCTION STATEMENT

 What makes you different?

Look at your peers and how they present and position themselves.

Who would you hire or not hire if you were the client? Why?

What makes someone attractive through the lens of the client, beyond the tangible work?

What do you love/not love about a creative you've hired in the past?

What would have made that experience better for you?

What do you want your clients to feel as a result of working with you?

Professionally, what separates you from your peers? Your years of experience? The way you deliver a project? How you interact with your clients?

Getting detailed in these areas can provide a wealth of information that will help move you forward.

Excerpt 7.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Chapter Six: Honing in on a Spiritual Practice

For some, “spirituality” may mean a daily meditation practice. For others, like famous painter Agnes Martin, it meant purging her artwork in a bonfire at the end of every year as a means of starting new, from a fresh canvas so to speak. Keep in mind that her paintings sell at auction for upwards of $800,000. And she is just one example of many.

Eventually, most artists and creatives arrive at the point where they want to embrace a lifestyle with more grace, ease and compassion. You may want to self-actualize and flourish in your career and personal space while still having time to savor the finer things in life. You may be doing everything you possibly can, but still feel that something, somewhere isn’t quite optimized. If that sounds like you, then it’s time to hone in on your spiritual practice.

Right out of the gate, I need to clarify that by spiritual I do not mean religious. What I mean is nondenominational, non-secular practices that are nonmaterial, incorporeal, intangible, inner-mental, psychological and metaphysical. Why does one need a spiritual practice? Why is this important? Why do we have to get all “woo woo”?

When you live as an independent creative entrepreneur, you are in the .0001 percent of the population. If you are of a minority (gender, race, etc.), this percentage goes down further. In other words, you are not, by definition, living in the real world. No, you are living in a world that you created. The rules don't apply to you. The status quo does not apply to you. The rules that underpin the corporate world and the larger world do not apply to you. The world is for the most part run by masculine energy with a rule set of Darwin and Machiavelli. It is not a world that welcomes possibility and and in no way welcomes or nurtures creativity.

Living in this harsh outer world whose values and truths are so different from our own is not particularly easy. We are bombarded by media, literature, shows, and the majority of the population who think, act and believe very differently than we do about the world, yet our work requires us to be in “woo woo” land in order to create something new. What we’re doing hasn't been done before, so thinking like everyone else is not a constructive or productive approach.

In order to be successful, we need to access something that is not immediately apparent. We need to believe in something that isn't there … yet. We need to be able to “see” a project before it comes to fruition.

Isn't living within in a creative contingency extremely difficult? Isn't it tough trying to thrive in a world that is so much less defined than everyone else's? Where you are judged by standards that don't apply to you and forced to have rules that don't serve you? Isn't challenging being a visionary when no one believes in you? Hell yes, that's why we're here.

Yes, that's why we need our own inner practices to help conjure the confidence and intuition to put our pants or our robe on and go to work in the morning. The main purpose of developing this practice is to combat the Nancy Negatives running the outer world who try to invade our inner world. A spiritual or psychological practice allows us to keep our noses to the grindstone and continue on when all other logic would tell us to quit.

A practice can help us access our highest purposes and separate that which is real from that which is fear and anxiety. Being our own CEOs and visionaries is no joke. It takes a mental toughness unlike any other industry. It is a fight that even Mohammed Ali would have a hard time training for. Being nonlinear in a linear world requires a special navigation system.

Maybe you are not George Lucas creating the next Star Wars. Maybe you are just an “average” creative doing video or music production or writing. Still, you need a practice that is going to keep you centered, that is going to help steady the boat amid rough seas. Your peer group can help, but your daily practices are what will take you to the next level. The level of being unf*ckablewith by any form of rejection or downward cycle. The mental acuity to keep flowing forward and refining what you are doing in a way that makes sense to you.

This takes effort and severe discipline. Just like with a routine, with spiritual discipline comes freedom. These practices can be moved right into your newly found routine, and after the first couple of weeks they will start to come naturally. Start for a solid 14 days and then stop for a few days and notice the difference. You will learn everything you need to know. Just know that this is without a doubt an inside job. It's the work that nobody sees that is the most important.

There are many methodologies that can help with this, and different techniques work for different people. Most coaches of these modalities recommend that you do these practices first thing in the morning before you start interacting with the world.

The most important thing is not necessarily when you do them but how consistently you do them. When you get busy, it's easy to let these go and after a few days of not doing them, we become susceptible to falling down the rabbit hole of real-world problems. Preventive maintenance is the cheapest. Try to commit to a minimum practice per day, no matter what, and you'll save yourself a lot of time and downward spiraling in the long run.

 ·      MEDITATION

·      AFFIRMATIONS

·      JOURNALING

·      VISION BOARDS

·      EXERCISE

Pick one or all of these techniques and start a practice. Take notes. Try it for at least 30 days and I guarantee you'll notice a difference. I frequently attend workshops that incorporate these practices. You can even try some in your own success or mastermind teams and make them group exercises.

The important thing is to start building the internal structure. It's easy to feel that it isn't necessary when things are going well. However, when things aren't going well, we tend to run to the hills and experience dips that are much lower than they need to be. A practice will help you build inner resistance and manage what can be a very stressful lifestyle with grace, ease and knowledge. It will help you art-direct your own life, enhance your daily routine and deal with the FUs (fear and uncertainty) with confidence and ease. It will also help manage the highs and lows and prevent you from getting stuck in areas that are not meant for you.

Excerpt 6.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Chapter Five: The Power of Peers - Staying Connected

Human connection is one of the most basic and fundamental needs. It is the key fuel in our self-actualization, happiness and level of achievement. We don’t often think about how important who we surround ourselves with really is. Famed author of Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, championed the power of peers and wrote about it extensively. Similarly, engaging with peers holds a lead place in Jack Canfield’s best-selling book, The Success Principles.

Such inventors and captains of industry as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone were devout believers as well, and participated in a mastermind group together – often hosted at one of their winter mansions in Florida. Media mogul Oprah Winfrey takes it up a notch and frequently hosts the world’s most accomplished women at her Montecito estate.

Staying connected as a solo entrepreneur is not a bonus or a trivial, tertiary goal. It is essential to our well-being and success. It is essential to our mental health. It is essential to love what we do and ultimately share it with others. There is, after all, only so much we can grow by ourselves, and I say this as an extremely independent person who loves to recharge on my own.

How can we increase our connection to peers and industry knowledge for greater personal and career success? What are the must-haves or minimum quotas for connection? How can we leverage our connections to assist in the collective growth of ourselves and our peers?

Four Must-haves:

1.    Speed-dial colleagues

2.    Family/friends on-call

3.    Creative community outlet (online connection)

4.    Mentor/coach/therapist

Ways to Connect:

·      Peers (mastermind groups, coffee dates, lunches/social hour, social media)

·      Professional mentor/coach (in-person, group coaching, events, Zoom/Skype meetings)

·      Extracurricular activities (sports, arts, classes, volunteer activities & other special interests)

·      Friends and family (calls, Skype, dinners, weekend activities, vacations)

·      Industry events (virtual and in-person)

·      Spiritual or faith-based groups/events

OPTIMIZING YOUR WORK ENVIRONMENT FOR GREATER CONNECTION

When it comes to community, the first and probably toughest choice we must make is where and how to work. For many creatives starting out, a home office is the only financially viable choice. But once that initial stage has passed, the desire to get a more distinguished workspace outside of the home, or at least very separate within the home, becomes very real. For those of us living in urban areas, the home office is all-consuming, because it's right in the middle of your house – or if you live in New York, it’s also your bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

Isolation can lead to downward-spiral thinking and make challenging tasks seem all the more overwhelming. Being in community and connection with other people will help distract you during those times into a more positive outlook. It will also provide emergency on-call support for those difficult client calls or acute midlife crises that will prevent you from going further down the rabbit hole.

As someone who has worked in both environments – surrounded by a studio manager and interns and completely alone – I can unequivocally say that there are advantages and disadvantages to each working situation. Working with others in a studio environment is awesome. However, paying the monthly lease and keeping the studio fully stocked, cleaned, and everything else you have to do with your house is not. The general task of having to go somewhere every day seems a bit of reversal from leaving a corporate job. Why would you go somewhere every day if you didn't have to? Why force yourself into a 9-to-5 role when you can work any hours you damn well please?

Managing and financing a workspace can also be a challenge and a burden. It's a large fixed-overhead expense that could be put toward things like traveling, branding, or other unique forms of business development. The space is unlikely to make money for you, and even if you can swing it by subleasing parts of it, it means taking on another role – leasing agent. The stress of having to earn that extra income during slower months can also take its toll and make you feel like you are a prisoner of your own space. It also can be taxing to work in your pajamas, drink coffee and shove chocolate in your face all day. I'm just saying.

Being able to pack up at the end of the day and go home to relax is also rewarding. You don't have to take your work with you or be bombarded by thoughts of work whenever you glimpse at your desk. It reminds you to have a life or get one.

I find that separation between work and home is a mentally healthier way of living. You get to turn off your “work brain,” which helps keep perspective on the rest of your life. Whenever I work from home, my head is always in my business, unless I physically leave the house. A home office can sometimes leave you with the feeling of living in an office that happens to have a full kitchen. In other words, you are either homeless or officeless on one level or another.

Even given those major advantages, it can still be hard to justify paying beaucoup bucks for a space that you don't technically need to have. I'm still figuring out the perfect solution for myself. Living on the west side of Los Angeles, commercial spaces are at an all-time crazy high. Do I take the plunge again to get outside space, knowing that I will have to cut my travel budget or make a sh*t-ton more money? I know I desperately crave greater social interaction and Taco Tuesdays, which spaces like WeWork have cleverly developed.

Contemplate your own situation. Are you happy where you are working? It's making up at least a third of your waking life. You deserve to be an environment that supports you and allows you to fully actualize your business and creative prowess. Is your current space adding or subtracting from your ultimate success? Where there's a will there's a way, and everything is negotiable. If you really want to leave your home environment, it is possible and there are solutions for all budgets. It may take a little work to find them, but they are definitely out there and sometimes it requires leaping before you look.

Excerpt 5.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

The Creative Guide is now available for purchase in German (Release date: March 14, 2019). To purchase on Amazon, please click here.

Chapter Four: Creating a Routine for Success

 When examining the lives of the world’s most gifted and creative people – including Ludwig van Beethoven and Georgia O’Keeffe, you’ll find that most, if not all, incorporated highly organized routines to optimize their daily lives and achieve their goals. Routine wasn’t just another habit they formed; it was their secret sauce for success. Author Mason Currey researched the ins and outs of history’s A-list and found one very clear and common thread. The way in which they spent their time was very similar: doing creative work (60 percent); sleeping (30 percent); and eating and doing leisure activities (10 percent). In other words, they didn’t spend half a day f*cking around on social media and posting selfies. Perhaps the best prescription is to keep things that simple and focused.

Charles Dickens said, “I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.” Similarly, writer Thomas Mann laments, “Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.” Writer Haruki Murakami talks about the importance of simplicity to his daily order: “I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”

Composer John Adams agrees. He says, “My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits. Because creativity, particularly the kind of work I do – which is writing large-scale pieces, either symphonic music or opera music – is just, it’s very labor intensive. And it’s something that you can’t do with an assistant. You have to do it all by yourself.”

One of the hardest things (second to uncertainty) is creating structure in your schedule that allows you to succeed. So far we know what it costs to be who you are, the certainty of uncertainty, and hopefully I’ve convinced you to make an effort to stay connected with your peers for moral support throughout the process. Now what?

Creating a personal routine for success is your next step in the game of getting ahead and staying there. What does this mean exactly? For example, today I am recovering from a rambunctious girls’ trip to New Orleans taken this past weekend. But guess what is on my to-do list? Writing this book! Yes, writing and working through a chapter. Creative endeavors sometimes require a routine for success, especially to help move us through the most difficult aspects of the day.

You may be thinking, wait – didn't I become a creative to avoid having to have a routine in the first place? Isn't that one of the main advantages of being footloose and freelance? To be able to do whatever you want, when you want? To evade the doldrums of a 9-to-5 schedule? To eat breakfast at noon in your pajamas and work into the wee hours if that's what you desire?

Well, yes and no. It is sometimes challenging for those coming from a traditional job and work schedule to transition into a creative career for precisely this reason – there's no schedule and no routine. Between these two extremes exists a happy medium, however.

There's no doubt that having a flexible schedule is beneficial and a huge lifestyle perk, especially for those emerging from the corporate world. However, with a routine and discipline comes an even greater freedom. The freedom to work less, get more sh*t done and maximize your free time to do the stuff you really love. This freedom flows from effective time management. Advance planning and adhering to our plans can increase our productivity by more than 40 percent.

TIPS FOR CREATING YOUR ROUTINE FOR SUCCESS:

1.    Allow a maximum of two social media check-ins for 15 minutes each per day. Time and limit yourself. No midnight scrolling!

2.    Plan your day in advance.

3.    Stick to your script – no matter what. For the first week, force yourself to do everything on your list. This will build muscle memory and instant time-management skills.

4.    Schedule your four most difficult tasks first thing in the day.

5.    Pretend you work for a well-organized union that requires you to schedule personal time and regular breaks.

6.    Schedule at least one brain exericise/stress reducer per day (meditation, nap, staring at the wall, quiet time or music bath).

7.    Schedule activities into 90-minute blocks.

8.    Add an “if there is time” list to your day.

9.    Have a notepad on your desk to list internet rabbit holes you want to go down or extracurricular activities that you want to pursue during your free time.

Excerpt 4.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Chapter Three: Investing in Yourself First

When we start out as creatives, many of us are reluctant to charge livable wages for our services. We fear that if we charge more, the client will expect more and we don’t have what it takes to deliver it. Furthermore, we often feel the need to do someone a favor by giving him or her a “deal” on services, not fully understanding that it was ultimately a disservice to the person. The part of the equation that we don’t get right is what it costs us to be creatives. It’s not just the education, the equipment, the overhead, the administrative hours, the time it takes to build and successfully market our work – there is a much bigger picture that we tend to miss.

Creatives tend to undercharge to the point of excruciation and then self-destruction. In my case, I struggled with the transition from normal working life to freelance life. I didn’t know how I was supposed to start my day, what I was supposed to be doing, what percentage of time I should be shooting, how to a handle the ebbs and flows. Freelance life as a creative was foreign to me. I felt like an alien, an imposter and ultimately, unemployed. I needed direction and was quickly becoming the worst boss I had ever had.

I wish someone had told me how much and how essential it is to invest in yourself first  – and that I had put more money on the table sooner. It may be the most important lesson I've learned so far. It takes a lot to build a cohesive body of work that expresses who you are and what your style and specialty is. I still struggle and still question myself every time I book a shooting trip. Even though I have the results from previous trips and I know it will pay the dividends, it's still not easy to do.

Jen Sincero, author of You Are a Badass at Making Money, drives this very point home. She urges readers to take steps “right now that will take you a giant step closer to your goal of getting rich. Make sure it’s something scary, something that you’d really rather not do because it’s super uncomfy, something that makes you feel like you might puke, e.g., renting the massive space for your new handbag company, flying across the country and figuring out how to get yourself in front of the guy who’s hiring for that engineering job that you’re perfect for, cold-calling ten prospective clients, hiring a new full-time employee, etc.”

 It takes courage and confidence to invest in yourself. The time versus money contrast is always at play. When you're making money you generally don't have the time, and when you have the time you may not have the money. You have to take a risk, which is quite difficult and not always a Suze Orman-approved move. I've done it a million times and I still second-guess myself, getting anxiety as I purchase tickets and hotel rooms and wonder the trip will really be worth it. Will the investment pay off? Am I crazy? Will I go out of business tomorrow, starve to death, and wish I hadn’t spent the last $2K on a plane ticket because it would have fed me for four more months?

As entrepreneurs, we tend to work alone or in small groups, so it’s easier to get in the mindset of scarcity. We have unlimited potential and a whole creative community of resources that we can access. The support is out there. People will support you in your personal work and will be happy to do it. You will actually be fulfilling them. We sometimes forget to ask others for help, connections and potential resources that others are actually happy to give to us. It is important to receive and engage others in your work as much as possible. Remember the purpose of getting your story out there: so that other people see it and benefit from it. The more people involved from the very beginning, the better.

The world needs you to create your own work, from your viewpoint. It's that simple. You're the only one who can do it. While there may be thousands of people that do what you do (photography, design, writing, etc.), you're the only one who can do it from your point of view. As creatives, it's a practice we have to commit to if we want to change the world and the way people see it. It’s not just our privilege, but also our responsibility.

In an age of fake news and cable news, the stories we tell – whether they are profound specimens of journalism or not – have never been more important. There's still a relatively small group of people that controls the media and content in the world. While things have opened up with social media, the biggest outlets still have the most power and the least amount of diversity. We can’t sit back and complain about the lack of diversity and the prevalence of sexist/racist/homophobic/every other bias while we sit at home eating doughnuts on the couch.

The platforms to express our beliefs and talents have never been bigger, more global and with a low to nonexistent cost of entry. There are no excuses. The conglomerate media is telling your story – and frankly, it’s not theirs to tell. Invest in yourself and your work and get the stories out there that you need to tell. You are here for a purpose. Losing sight of that purpose is a career risk you can’t afford to take.

Get out there!

Tips for investing in your own work:

 1.    Work with a coach or peer group to identify your short- and long-term goals.

2.    Identify the bodies of work you'd like to create.

3.    List all the steps (as small as possible) to create the work.

4.    List the financial resources needed to so, and possibilities for raising that equity if it's not in your bank account.

5.    List why you want to create the work and who will benefit from it.

6.    Start taking small steps toward planning/scheduling time to work toward the goal, including target dates.

7.    Document the work in a book, magazine or e-publication to help build your brand and make new work easier.

Excerpt 3.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Chapter Two: Bringing Home the Bacon, Bling & Benjis

When FU-ing uncertainty, you still need a degree of certainty, and that starts with bringing in and managing money so that you can move out of a survival state of mind and into a creative state of being — in other words, so that you can do what you’re meant to be doing.

The brain is a one-trick-at-a-time pony. It’s almost impossible for your brain to survive and create at the same time. In his groundbreaking book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about the importance of transcending our survival state, which encapsulates stress, contraction, fear, anger, energy loss and limitedness, in order to free up our frontal lobe so it can focus exclusively on creation.

If you are constantly fearful about money and have a good reason to be, neuroscience will prevent you from creating. Your lack of creation will then prevent you from earning money from doing what you love. Your survival instincts will kick in and not dissipate until you start bringing in the do-re-mi. It’s a vicious cycle that we want to end now — as swiftly and simply as possible.

I know no one told you there would be math today, but the IRS views any business that is not profitable after three years as a hobby. It turns out, hobbies don’t pay the bills. So that’s why we’re going to spend a little time on what I call critical math. Here’s what you need to know:

BASIC ACCOUNTING + MONEY ORGANIZATION

One of the most basic and important steps in managing your hard-earned pirate booty is to have a very clear understanding of your incoming revenue and outgoing expenses. While this may seem simple enough, you’d be surprised how many people have no idea of what their fixed expenses are per month. This makes it all too easy to dip into the red and put yourself in a precarious financial position over time without knowing it. Money mogul Robert Kiyosaki says that the biggest mistake most people make is not understanding the difference between assets and liabilities. An asset puts money into your pocket and a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket. While accounting is not the world’s most exciting subject, it is a necessary evil in wealth and running a creative business.

Outgoing Expenses:

Exercise: List all of your outgoing monthly expenses and calculate the grand total.

Can any of these be reduced? Insurance (health, home, business, life, car) is often an area where we overpay and don’t negotiate aggressively enough. Are you deducting your home office? Do you have recurring subscriptions that you’re being charged for but not using (gym memberships, apps, etc.)? Scour through each and every expense and make sure it’s necessary and worthwhile. I recently realized I was overpaying for business insurance by 400%. In about 15 minutes, I was able to cancel one policy in favor of another and save close to $1,000 per year. There are many overhead expenses we often don’t think about. Those $9.99 subscriptions to no-name apps start to add up overtime. Pay attention to where your money goes. It will help you make wiser financial decisions and also alert you when you simply need to make more moola!

Other red-flag areas are dinners out, gifts, storage units, last-minute expenditures, online shopping for sh*t you don’t need, overspending at Starbucks, bank fees, and phone and TV services. Be diligent about how you spend and you will (sometimes immediately) experience greater financial freedom. Knowledge is power if you use it!

Incoming Revenue:

Go back at least three years, if you can, and look at your revenue patterns. While freelance income is sporadic there usually are some patterns or consistencies between years. Are there clients that could be on retainer to the benefit of both parties? Are there known slow periods that you could start drumming up business for or plan to work on a personal project? Are you making more or less than you think you are?

Savings:

What’s your back stash of cash? How many months can you live on your savings? If the answer is 0, we have a problem Seymour. Having a stockpile of dough is essential to being a creative and will keep you feeling free. Start saving immediately and/or consider alternative forms of income generation to get a base started if you are currently living paycheck to paycheck.

Debt:

Debt is a four-letter word. Consolidate and get rid of it ASAP. It’s the not-so-hidden albatross around your neck that weighs you down and severely limits your freedom to create. If you need to live in your parents’ basement to clean up your cards and improve your credit score, do it. Keeping up with the Kardashians will only keep you in the not-so-golden prison of life. You can’t change the past, but you can give yourself a better future by paying down debts and spending within your means.

If you have a lot of debt and suffer from a lack of self-discipline, then have a friend audit all of your transactions. Look for your Achilles’ heel. Is it late-night online shopping? Where are you burning money? Stick post-it notes around your landmine spending zones (computer, TV) and in your wallet: Do I absolutely need this? Will the world end if I don’t buy this? Is this product going to make me money? If you can’t answer yes to all three questions, the buying decision should be no.

List your current debts:

Interest Income:

Do you have your money working as hard as it can for you? Are you saving for your retirement? Are you tax sheltering as much income as you can? Get your accountant or financial advisor to help make sure you’re not overpaying the government. Especially this one!

Investments/401(k)/IRA/Others:

Based on this information, we can see our base expenses and how much we need to cover. From that amount, we can project our monthly and yearly goals of a more ideal income.

Monthly Minimum:

Yearly Minimum:

Discretionary Expenses I’d like to Add:

·      four international trips a year at $6,000 each

·      two new Macs

·      new Maserati

·      house in the Hollywood Hills

Now add these into your monthly costs to figure what your ideal monthly and yearly goals are. Paying attention to the numbers and just doing basic accounting of money coming and money going out is huge. What you measure grows!

Monthly Goal:

Yearly Goal:

Five-Year Goal:

It’s always less scary when we get it down on paper and can see it. Look at this paper at least quarterly, if not monthly. It will help you move forward in a way that’s economically efficient and it’ll allow you to use your financial resources to the highest utility.

Excerpt 2.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Living with Fear & Uncertainty - The Ultimate FU

Here's the truth: Uncertainty totally sucks, and if not combatted fiercely, can completely derail you. Attempts to help you reframe your uncertainty about life and your career from new age practitioners frankly do little to assuage it.

So let’s get real. Fear lives with us for a reason: It's a survival instinct. And when you live as a creative, the fear of not surviving or meeting your basic needs can be very real. In fact, you might be living in an activated fear state most of the time.

 It makes sense that many creatives turn to meditation, breath work and yoga, and practice them regularly. The practices can help infuse balance into an otherwise chaotic inner world. However, they can’t eliminate the uncertainty of being successful, fear of being unsuccessful, fear of making it and fear of not making it. Every day, every week, every month and every year of my life as a creative has been completely uncertain. I've had years that started out with a bang and ended with a bust and vice versa—years that started out thin and ended on a really high note. I have hours within my day that take the exact same trajectory. You just don't know. And no amount of downward dogs is going to alleviate that.

Glamorizing fear, fearlessness and the ability to control what you do not is futile. It misses the point and in most cases, amplifies your insecurity about success because uncertainty and fear become just two other things you haven't conquered. It's another thing you have to pretend to be: fearless. It's counterproductive and a misuse of your time.

Recognizing where your uncertainty and fear live is the first part of helping to dismantle it. According to Dr. Travis Bradbery, detecting fear as soon as it surfaces allows you to contain it before it gets out of control. The limbic system in your brain produces fear as a knee-jerk reaction to uncertainty, which inhibits good decision-making. By identifying and separating out the fear response, you can assess the situation more accurately and rationally, and show your brain who the real boss is!

If you are a creative entrepreneur, you likely have a litany of uncertainties in your life: your income, cash flow, clients, how your work will be received, if you will ever truly make it this month and make it this lifetime, whether you should keep going, whether you should fold and get a normal job, etc. These are anxiety-provoking because they are real. If it was something your brain was just making up, you'd be over it by now. You would have officially transcended uncertainty in kindergarten.

I am not going to pretend that this is easy or that it gets easier. It really doesn't. Fear and uncertainty—let’s call it FU for short—gets easier only in that it gets more familiar. The further along you get and the larger the jobs and larger the lifestyle you maintain, FU can actually increase. It can sometimes get harder to take risks and harder to challenge ourselves more than we did the previous time. As we age we tend to want more creature comforts and more certainty. We start to think, I'm XX years old, and I should own a home, have a certain car and a certain lifestyle by now. When the “shoulds” come out, FU multiplies and we get further away from our purpose and path. We talk ourselves into becoming risk-adverse. Sure, it worked out last time, but what about this time? We tell ourselves, I’m too old, smart, talented, untalented, fill in the blank to being doing this. Sometimes a routine of successes makes the fear of failure more potent. Detaching from success is key to making this work. Let your goal be to learn and grow in the face of FU.

Taking risks is a critical component to success.

You might be thinking—I'm already in a state of fear and you want me to double down? Yes. Put more chips on the table and play more than one hand. Without risk there is no reward. The world desperately needs more creative leadership but creatives (especially solo ones) are reluctant to lead. People in corporate suburbia dream of this world. Make it worth your time and energy, and theirs. Recognize that you are in a special position to do what you do, and that not taking a risk is frankly the biggest risk you can take.

As technology has dramatically changed most creative industries, learning new things and taking new risks has become a way of life. Literally no one knows where the cards are going to land. The revenue stream of most creative industries has been turned upside down, and everyone is struggling to reach the end consumer whether in music, photography, advertising, writing, etc. It affects all creative niches. In this chaos, however, lies a unique opportunity. Never before has there been such a need for prolific content. Never before has the platform for this content been larger, more global and more instantaneous. For content creators, the opportunity to develop assets and have them placed is at an all-time high.

While there’s no question that we are amidst an FU apocalypse, I believe there is a silver lining: As creatives, we are no longer dependent on an old-school corporate hierarchy. We are all equally able to distribute our content and reach an audience. That is huge. It’s a privilege and a responsibility.

The reality is that most of us are not here by virtue of coincidence. Being a creative entrepreneur is not the easy thing to do. It’s the thing you had to do.

Now of course there is a positive side to everything. If you had certainty, work and life would become monotonous and it would likely impede your ability to create. Uncertainty also brings about possibility. If everything was certain, windfalls of success would not be possible. You would be less inclined to take risks in order to maintain your status quo. You would be comfortably numb and less likely to really draw outside of the lines. Additionally, you might obtain more material goods and create a lifestyle that keeps up with the Joneses while robbing you of inspiration.

The next time you're feeling uncertain about your life (probably within the next few minutes), ask yourself, would I rather be fearful or would I rather be bored? Those are your options. Let's be honest, fear is a lot more fun and exciting.

Excerpt 1.0 from Getting Ahead: The Creative's Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing What You Love

Introduction

Creatives are the light of the world and we need to shine, more now than ever before. It is our work that has the greatest power to transcend cultural differences and transform society.

You are the only hope we have!

You are here because you have a burning desire to contribute something important to the world. Something the world needs to see, hear, touch or do. Something that is working through you that you are meant to share. Something that will likely change the course of your life and the lives of others, if only for a moment.

You may not think what you do is revolutionary. It may in fact not be—on the surface.

Being an individual creative entrepreneur doing what you love for a living puts you in the one percent. It puts you in a group so narrow that your very existence of waking up every morning and taking a stab at life truly matters. It matters because most people don't have the courage to do it.

Most people wouldn't dare to take the risk of doing something they truly love for such a wide variety of reasons: it's scary, it's impractical, it won't pay the bills, it's unstable, there’s a risk of failure, and that’s just the beginning.

You doing what you do gives others permission to do what they want to do.

If just a few like-minded people are putting out writing, scripts, fine art, music, and photography, think of how many voices are not being represented and heard.

Do you love everything that's going on politically? Do you love the way the world characterizes you, your gender, your race, your age, etc.? If you're not madly in love with the status quo, then it's time to do something about it by contributing in a way that others can see. The operative words are can see. Get your work and your voice out there. Make yourself heard. The world needs you.

The reality is that most of us did not end up here by accident. You did not become a creative entrepreneur because it was the easy thing to do. It wasn't the convenient thing to do. It was what you had to do. That means you couldn't or wouldn't take the “certain” route of corporate life, a 9-to-5 by any definition, or any other conventional career path. Working for someone and something else wasn't for you.

You have a purpose and a vision, so much so that you were or are willing to risk your survival to do what you do. Think about that. It's pretty impressive when you assess the risk you took to get here. It goes against common sense. It even goes against Darwin. You chose uncertainty in order to fulfill your life purpose. Just remember that. You may hate it, it may be your least favorite part of being a creative, but you ultimately chose it over certainty.

Being a creative is privilege. With the talent and good fortune comes an obligation. One that so few of us living in the Western world truly understand. It's an obligation to narrate the stories of the world through our perspective. It's an obligation to de-corporatize and re-democratize the media. It's an obligation to be present and show up every day doing the best that we can do.

That’s not to say it’s easy, but it’s to say that it doesn’t have to be hard. Uncertain? Yes. Curveballs when you lease expect them? Yes. Requires tons of faith, courage and curiosity? Yes. Doable? Absolulely.

My goal is to provide you with a framework for building emotional support and success. I hope this book inspires you to take the next step in your creative endeavor, or at a minimum, know that you are not alone in the process. Your struggles are our struggles. Your successes are our successes. Your failures are our failures.

You may be in a position where you’re stuck between your day job and taking the leap into doing what you really want to be doing full-time. You may have already taken the leap, but now struggle with getting new clients and staying out of the red on a month-to-month basis. You may have gotten the clients and done the work but are waiting ad nauseam to get paid. Your clients may have paid, but tend to be one-hit wonders, are inconsistent, or are constantly trying to negotiate a “better” deal, making you wonder whether the corporate world was so bad after all. At least you had complimentary coffee and pantry snacks that were regularly stocked by someone other than you. Or you may just be stuck somewhere in the middle—you’re mildly successful but don’t know how long it will last and can’t find the gusto to stop staring at the couch and really go for it in a way that guarantees your long-term success.

There are many things I wish I would have known earlier in my journey as an independent creative. In studying both leaders and independent high-achievers in creative fields, I have analyzed what it takes to get over the humps and persevere in a world with seemingly no structure or recipe for success.

We will dive headfirst into the most common challenges creatives face and demystify what it really takes to get ahead—and stay there.

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Excerpt 9.0 from Carry-On Only: Chile & Bolivia

I didn’t think I could top my last trip, but somehow this one managed to do just that. The Atacama Desert was love at first sight. My goal was relaxation, a true respite, shooting in the desert light again, getting away from it all, and reconnecting with my true self, desires and purpose. That’s all. My inner cowgirl got a workout on this escapade.

The landscape was absolutely stunning and varied in so many wonderful ways. I had great guides (by great, I mean young and hot), plus a town full of adventure junkies waiting to get the party started.

The desert was sophisticated and refined. Chile is distinguished by its combination of beauty, cleanliness, well-paved roads, manicured landscape, and great food and wine.

I stayed at the Hotel Altiplanico and shot several luxury lodges and many landscapes for Design + Destination, which were intoxicatingly beautiful. It is a place like no other. Salt pans, geysers, altiplanic lagoons, Salar de Tara, Valle de la Luna and so much more.

Tourists were so happy to be there, and an almost instant camaraderie formed. Naturally, when two Korean guys in their 20s asked to take a picture with me on a hike I said yes. After the snap, they thanked me and said they had never seen a non-obese American and wanted to show their friends back home. Happy to help.

Although just a short trip over the border, Bolivia is a million miles away from Chile in terms of politics, infrastructure and government. The group of travelers I was with that day paid immigration police a “fee” to enter and exit the country, which they split and immediately pocketed in front of us.

There’s a shocking socio-economic difference immediately visible at the border separating the two countries. It’s like going from Park Avenue to El Paso. The energy of the place and infrastructure (or lack thereof ) immediately hit the senses. The stunning landscape, however, was off the charts. Laguna Colorada was breathtaking, and the surrounding areas and villages were well worth the price of entry.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Excerpt 8.0 from Carry-On Only: Around the World

I’m not quite sure how the Around the World idea came about, but once it was in my head it was impossible to get it out. There was something about the concept of flying around the globe in a perfect circular way, making stops along the way that appealed to my inner Gemini. This trip was groundbreaking in many ways and quite a change of pace from my previous trips.

Each stop was dramatically different from the next, and some were not places that I’d recommend to a solo female traveler to go — which made it that much more of a task and achievement. Traveling carry-on only was the hardest here.

Different climates and cultural norms regarding dress made it a challenge unlike any other. I had a lot of lugging to do in between hotels and airports, but I made it work and was better for it in the end. It also gave me a source of pride flying home, having lived out of that little container for so long in so many places.

It was an incredible trip that I’m eternally grateful for, but I’m not going to lie — there were growing pains and not just wardrobe ones — all along the way. I started to think I had bitten off more than I could chew. As the saying goes, what you resist, persists. I was in family denial. It was the kale in my teeth that everyone saw except me.

Up until this point, I wore singlehood as a proud Girl Scout badge of honor.

I felt sorry for married people and assumed they were insecure or hadn’t read the fine print. Marriage was co-dependence. People who were tired of trying to be someone on their own got married so they could commiserate under a socially acceptable umbrella of mediocrity. Or at least that’s what I thought. Until the Spanish Inquisition started and persisted relentlessly on every leg of this trip.

Why are you alone? Aren’t you scared to travel by yourself ? What do your parents think of you traveling alone? Why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have kids? Why are you a big fat loser? How do you answer that? I struggled with being single and childless. Why here and why, now you ask? Because 10 of 10 people I met would ask me if I was married with children, and why not.

All of a sudden political correctness was out the door and big, invasive life questions pushed in like a gale-force wind.

I wasn’t sure if something was wrong with me or if an insecurity was sparked in them. In retrospect, it was probably both: 50 shades of envy and pity.

I was shocked at how far I thought women had come and the reality of how far we still had to go.

It really wasn’t OK to be man-less and childless out in the world. And surprisingly,it was other Westerners (Americans in particular) who probed the issue. In Vietnam, I met a really cool American couple and nice French couple, both of whom were stunned that I was there alone. “I would never do that!” they remarked in horror. “Aren’t you afraid of being by yourself?” “Aren’t you afraid if some- thing happens to you?”

Hotel staff also struggled with my solo check-ins. In one case, I was led to the lobby for ginger tea. After about a half-hour or so, I checked back with the receptionist to see if the room was ready. She said, “Oh yes, it’s been ready all day. We’re just waiting for your husband.” You and I both, sister. It felt like everywhere I went and every conversation I had, was about one thing: the audaciousness of me being a single woman, traveling alone.

My life as a travel femme fatale was losing steam. I felt lonely. I even missed my love avoidant ex-boyfriend.

Even he would have been a step in the right direction from where I was. I was also tired of being jerked around by cab drivers and people thinking that I was a prostitute eating alone in restaurants. I missed ordering shared plates and a bottle of wine at dinner. For the first time ever, I truly felt alone in the world.

Traveling through eight consecutive countries that don’t necessarily view women’s rights as human rights, and where women are not valued as equals, opened the door to a kind of sadness and depression that I had never felt before.

It was a shot to my spirit. It seemed that being single, regardless of gender, was not an option in these places. Not having kids is the second scarlet letter, and having a creative career and traveling alone would be a jailable offense if someone had considered that it might actually happen.

I took pride in being independent and not needing anyone. But an awareness started to seep in. Being counterdependent in life was a choice that was no longer serving me. I could do it, clearly, but not contently. Especially if I wanted to order multiple breakfasts and pass them off as my partner’s. Reluctantly, I’ll admit that having someone who had my back would have come in very handy here and would have made this trip infinitely more comfortable and enjoyable. While enlightened life coaches eschew comfort as the anti- growth drug, a woman does deserve a break every now and then.

The feeling that a woman’s place in the world was nowhere was starting to consume me. I felt alienated not from just the place I was visiting but from humanity as a whole. From West to East, women were defined, acknowledged and judged by their looks alone, and the fear of a woman being anything more than just an aesthetic servant was palpable.

I missed my tribe, my people. I felt that I was scratch- ing at the earth and having very little success on a large scale. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps even the wrong century. It was impossible to evade these issues on this trip. They were too much in the forefront — not only about where I was geograph- ically, but they made me wonder about the rest of the world, too. Was it better and had we really advanced elsewhere? Seeing women’s roles defined as subser- vient to men’s, hidden and the property of somebody else, forced me to ask: “Why am I here?”“Why was I put here in the first place?” I began contemplating whether or not photography was my true life purpose.

The trip began normally enough. Istanbul was a great start with its wonderful hospitality, amazing fine dining and a burgeoning contemporary art scene. It was probably the most westernized city of the trip and I felt fine here. I especially loved exploring the up-and-coming neighborhoods on the verge of becoming mainstream.

Israel was fascinating and full of contrast, and it was here that I started to feel like a fish out of water and pushed beyond my comfort zone. Tel Aviv was so liberal, had delicious, fresh food on every corner, crazy donuts with spoons to carve out the middle, phenomenal Bauhaus architecture, great art museums and artists. Comparatively, Jerusalem was a shock to the senses.

I sheruted (Israeli shuttle) there from Tel Aviv, a 1.5-hour journey but a world away. The religious conservatism on all sides was staggering, as was the melting pot of three major world religions descending on precisely the exact same spot. I felt for Jesus Christ because all of Jerusalem is uphill — figuratively and literally. I also never realized that all three major world religions have the same affection for black polyester garments. I rode in the special Shabbat elevators, ate unrefrigerated leftovers from the hotel, and took a taxi into the West Bank where my Palestinian guide showed me the cage Jesus was born in.

What? Yes, it was a cage. Perhaps not unlike the one I felt I was in, being a single female traveler. Getting in and out of the West Bank, a relatively short distance, was like a CIA mission. I had an Israeli driver bring me to the wall, then a Palestinian driver pick me up on a side street. The wall was gratified with the words “Whatever” facing Israel. I carried on to Masada and the Dead Sea, down to Eilat and did a land crossing over the border into Jordan.

I was proposed to by a Bedouin gypsy in Petra who invited me back to his cave. I was stared at like a porn star in my North Face burka in Qatar. I was tested in many ways in Vietnam, the longest leg of my trip. At one point, while staying in Hue, the hotel staff (which was extremely lovely) went off in mad search for my husband. Words cannot describe staffers’ looks of confusion when I told them I was traveling alone.

China proved immensely different from my previous trip — a country that had transitioned in so many fundamental ways politically and structurally. Japan was beautiful and much more in line architecturally and design-wise with my passion, so it was fun to get back into shooting there.

The scariest moment of the trip was traversing from Aqaba to Amman on the Kings Highway in Jordan. I hired a private driver from my hotel, thinking I would be safer that way. About an hour outside of Aqaba, the driver stopped and another man came into the car. I was sweating bullets in the backseat praying to God, Allah and Abraham that I would make it to Amman. I started talking about my “husband,” who was waiting for me at the hotel, and my imaginary child. Leave it to me to not have enough imaginary children, which caught their attention immediately. I had only one child who was female. Pity changed their demeanor and they wished me and my husband luck and many sons to come.

Choosing climatically diverse countries with very different cultures/religions and little aspect of human rights or solo female travelers all at one time, was an interesting and poorly thought-out choice on my part. Doing this with carry-on-only luggage and camera gear was ridiculous. Cathartic, but ridiculous. I was done with travel for a while after this trip. (At least for a full three weeks anyway.)

It was time to go back to places where women had a little more power in the world, even if only on the surface.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next & Last Post in this Series: Sunday, December 24th at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST

Excerpt 7.0 from Carry-On Only: On Being a Solo Female Traveler

Being a solo female traveler, albeit generally very safe, does have certain setbacks. One is that other people cannot believe you are a solo female traveler. In most parts of the world, it will be assumed that you are a “woman for hire.” I find it’s best not to tell people you are traveling alone.

While you may think you’re making your mark on feminism, you’re really a weapon of mass destruction to the social order of 98% of the world. You’re upsetting the core belief of many societies all at once: Women are property of men and cannot self sustain. I’ll admit it does put a little smile in my heart.

You’re making an impact, but you’ll want to play your cards carefully if you want an expedited hotel check-in or to make friends with locals quickly. Take care of yourself and let society deal with their own limitations. Never let them see you coming. Feminism is like cooking eggs — slow, low and steady wins the race. Never turn off the gas, but also try not to scorch the pan in the first two minutes.

I don’t believe the world is more unsafe for women than men — in certain situations perhaps, but on the whole, it evens out as people are more apt to help a solo woman than a strange foreign man. Take pre- cautions, blend in, observe before acting, know your environment, mark your exits, and make sure you have safe transportation and someone who knows where they are going, i.e. preferably not a fellow foreign male traveler.

I believe that the future of travel is women. While businessmen have had their monopoly on travel, it’s women who are going to have the greatest impact on travel going forward and the world will be a better place for it. I find that women are generally more curious and better at adapting to different environments than men are and more socially conscious when doing so. Our connection with the world and other women in it is key to moving things forward.

You’ve come a long way baby, and you’re about to go a lot further.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here.  To purchase a print edition magazine, please click here.  To have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next Post in this Series: Sunday, December 17th at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST

Excerpt 6.0 from Carry-On Only: Bangkok, Bali & Santa Monica

There I was, in the dead of winter, in a car wash, reading a GQ magazine. As the water splashed, sprayed and hosed the ice chunks off my Volkswagon Tiguan, there it was:

The list of the top 10 pools in the world, and my favorite: the infinity pool at the Alila Ubud, a tropical escape in Bali. It was a done deal in an instant. I’m going to Bangkok and Bali.

My sister, KP, and I packed our bags. We hit the largest markets in Bangkok, got caught in a red-shirt protest and ate our way through town in spicy food before heading to Bali. Once we arrived in Bali, we were crazy spoiled at Alila Resorts — which, as mentioned, was really the impetus for the trip.

Alila surpassed the high expectations we had. It was a stunning resort with incredible service, amazing food and one of the best cooking classes I’d ever taken. We went fire dancing, saw the famed clairvoyant, Ketut Liyer (a la “Eat, Pray, Love”) and attended sacred Hindu ceremonies where I lost my sari and had to publicly exit the water sans clothing.

We indulged in daily massages and ate all the Balinese fried rice we could get our hands on. Our readings with Ketut revealed that we were both very powerful women ... who were destined to have three children each. Who knew?

My highlights were riding bicycles through the endless rice paddies and “resort crashing.” I think we managed to visit and photograph every luxury resort in Bali. Sometimes a car wash is all it takes.

SANTA MONICA (2 months later)

After years of prodding and cruel weather check-ins, the powers that be (my sister) convinced me to move to the West Coast. It was a big move in many ways — more spiritually and lifestyle-wise than anything else. I had started a business from scratch with a commercial studio in Chicago and had lived there for eight years. All my contacts were there and it required a huge leap of faith to risk it all for California, not knowing where the pieces would fall and exactly what I’d do with my business or myself.

When I arrived in the warmer climate, I leased a studio in Culver City, created my bachelorette pad in Santa Monica, and began a demi-decade of insane travel. It was the beginning of a new era.

I committed to keeping my overhead as low as possible and investing 25-35 percent of my business revenue into research and development—aka travel. The more I traveled, the more portfolio work I created and the more I got booked for high-end architectural work at home. It was a huge jump at first, but I had the flexibility to travel at any time of year outside of high season, and that alone made the expense much more reasonable.

A period of epic creative endeavors had begun.

I spent my spare time researching new destinations and travel opportunities and contacting photo editors to seal the deal. In a matter of years, my work appeared in Dwell, Architectural Digest and Italian Vogue to name a few.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next Post in this Series: Sunday, December 10th at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST

Excerpt 5.0 from Carry-On Only: Dubai - Deserted by the Desert

My business in Chicago was doing pretty well. Things were expanding organically at a good pace and I was certainly not short on travel and portfolio ideas. Many of my Chicago-based architectural clients were setting up shop in Dubai. With the world’s latest and greatest buildings under construction and a large expanse of desert, there were seemingly no bounds or lack of vision or funding.

My client Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was on the forefront of development in the Emirates. They were constructing the tallest building in the world, later to be known as the Burj Khalifa. I had several other clients with large-scale projects underway and wanted to connect with them on site and pitch shooting their ventures both in a documentary style while under development, as well as upon completion.

To say it was hot in the desert would be an obvious understatement. The sun felt like a blowtorch singeing my skin.

Carrying equipment in the heat exacerbated the sensation and I was unsure if my compact flash cards would survive inside the camera. It was extremely uncomfortable to be outside even for short periods at a time. Furthermore, the city had a haze over it at all times, which made getting a clear shot difficult at best.

I felt in some ways deserted by the desert.

I couldn’t quite find what I was looking for and the shooting prospects were a lot less than I anticipated. The interiors lacked integrity or a clear vision and it felt like the city was trying to find its voice in design, which was largely derivative.

The most rewarding part of the trip was hanging out in a British and South African expat community. I stayed at a beautiful, boutiquey, Philippe Starck-esque styled guesthouse and got the lowdown on what it is like to live and work in Dubai as an expat.

I was surprised at how intimidating the laws were for women. If you went in for a medical physical and it turned out you were pregnant and unmarried, you’d go to jail. Expat women in long-term relationships but not married were so afraid of getting pregnant that they abstained from sex.

Most were there in hopes of a big payout, hedging their bets in the financial industry, with the prospects of that happening seemingly further away each day. I met an Englishman in finance who was dead broke, but went to the extremes of borrowing his friend’s Porsche for dates and business meetings and pretending to live in an upscale hotel to foster the illusion of wealth.

Upon returning home, I met again with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the Chicago office and was hired to shoot a permanent installation for an exhibition titled “At The Top,” located on the top-floor viewing deck of the Burj Khalifa.

In the end, I was happy with the documentary shots I had created and the ability to contribute to the viewing deck gallery, without having to return to the UAE desert. I felt like the opportunity and energy around new business was waning and it was time to turn a new leaf in terms of travel and location shooting.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next Post in this Series: Sunday, December 3rd at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST

Excerpt 4.0 from Carry-On Only: If I Could Marry A City — It Would Be Cape Town

Upon returning from China, I started to see my travel investment pay off. I had tons of new portfolio images and shots to pitch and sell to editorial clients. As a photographer, it’s always key to keep fresh work in front of potential clients. They also loved the travel vein running through the work and it of course made me appear larger than life, which never hurts in an industry whose foundation is smoke and mirrors.

It became clear that building my portfolio work and making client contacts abroad were my best options for upleveling. This inspired me to start thinking about other specific places to travel, and particularly, ones with great interior and exterior spaces. This time I was focused on high-end residential spaces and the destination of choice was none other than Cape Town.

It was love at first sight. If I could marry a city it would be Cape Town. I had an amazing stay both work- and travel-wise. I connected with SAOTA architects, arguably the top modern architects in South Africa, and possibly on the continent.

My second day in Cape Town, I met with SAOTA’s owner, the well-known Stefan Antoni. I arrived seven minutes early to his office, which was duly noted at reception. Stefan sat on the lower level in a pod literally dead center. He motioned me to come forward and sit down. I introduced myself and took a seat. Stefan waited about 10 minutes to look up, at which point he said, “I thought you’d be ugly.”

It’s not every day a woman receives a compliment like that.

His work was beautiful and to my great fortune, most of his clients owned five or more homes, so they were impeccably designed from the inside out and gently, if ever, used. I was able to build an arsenal of portfolio and editorial work here, some of which are still my favorite to date. Stefan started out shooting his own camera right behind me at the first couple of houses and lightly let up his grip as my weeks in Cape Town went by.

The guesthouse I stayed at in Sea Point was lovely and run by four women who promised to find me a husband the next time I came back ... in this case, that would end up being a couple of months later.

If Chicago was a man desert, Cape Town was a man tsunami. A vortex. I couldn’t walk out of the guest house without meeting someone. And as every good fisherwoman knows, you catch a lot more when you lower your net. It was good, clean, liberating, no-strings-attached fun.

SOUTH AFRICA PART II

I rarely travel to the same place twice. It goes against my constitution of discovery.

However, in the case of Cape Town it was inevitable. There was so much to see and do, and I made great connections which only fueled the fire for a return trip. I also had a major crush on a modern architect and that stone clearly needed turning. Not that I needed more of an excuse to escape, but Cape Town is a top shooting destination in its summer (the northern hemisphere’s winter) and thus the town is geared up for still and video production at all levels. I wanted to enhance my portrait portfolio taking advantage of Cape Town’s international modeling scene, continue with architecture with the top local architects, and also propose a pro-bono project for Mothers2Mothers—a non-profit organization that helps pregnant women with AIDS.

South Africa did not disappoint a second time. I was able to shoot more medium format film landscape-style, and cause more trouble with my greater knowledge of Cape Town and a romantic liaison that doubled as a driver and photo assistant. I stayed at a gorgeous boutique guesthouse overlooking Camps Bay, with stunning models coming in and out all day to shoot on my balcony. It was as good as it sounds on paper. Everything in South Africa I photographed turned to gold. It was a huge success on all levels— professionally and personally. I was shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak.

I met an Englishman who was desperate to impress. Over dinner at a fine dining restaurant in Camps Bay,

I heard about his family lineage, which according to him, went back to 30 B.C. early France. For the love of God! Fortunately, around 50 A.D., the waiter sensed a hostage situation and rescued me with another generous pour of red wine—I’m guessing my third gallon at this point.

I carefully navigated my way out of dessert and returned to my hotel, downed a bottle of Advil and passed out.

All in all, I had more dates during these two trips to South Africa than I had in Chicago in five years. The net-net of this fell in the positive column and the distance factored well into the love (avoidant) story I loyally subscribed to. I was also able to “up” my portfolio game tenfold with my key, high-level interior shots. The combination of indoor and outdoor beauty is unsurpassed in the world.

South Africa and this trip in particular, will always hold a special place in my heart.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next Post in this Series: Sunday, November 26th at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST

Excerpt 3.0 from Carry-On Only: China

With a year into my studio and my business, I had very little cash in the bank. So I did what any rational person would do and bought a plane ticket to China.

I was getting a lot of work shooting interiors and exteriors in Chicago, an architectural capital, and really didn’t have a portfolio that portrayed my work and sense of style in that area. I was attracted to the energy, growth and regeneration that was going on in China. I wasn’t fully briefed, but I knew I wanted some of what they were having.

China provided a unique opportunity to 1) travel and 2) photograph the latest and greatest interior and exterior spaces that were being built in anticipation of the upcoming Olympic games.

It was epic in a way I didn’t understand at the time.

I liaised with the publisher of a design magazine to help grease the wheels in getting through the front door.

I got to uncover the “new China” that was emerging behind the cracks of communism and pre-Olympic euphoria.

It was a fascinating experience, to say the least, and my first time shooting Philippe Starck’s work.

Through a friend of a friend at Getty Images, I found a fixer to help translate and organize access to spaces. She was a lovely graduate student named Wu Yun. We traversed Beijing together, left, right and backwards, going to the city’s hottest underground restaurants, hotels and clubs. Keep in mind that this was a county where Wallpaper magazine and travel guides — publications that focused on design — were still banned.

I’ll never forget being in a cab with Wu Yun on the last leg of our trip and asking what her favorite part was. To my surprise, she was not at all impressed with the venues or the culinary tastings. She said that when she relayed to her friends and family what she was up to, no one could believe there was such a thing as a young, female photographer, and that she was working for one.

Her words struck me like a rock. It had never occurred to me that as a female creative entrepreneur, I wasin the .001 percent. Who I was and what I did was actually shocking to other people. I had a newfound sense of gratitude for my profession and freedom to practice it.

When I returned to China 10 years later, I was stunned by the political and cultural change that had taken place. It was almost unrecognizable to me. Places change. A lot.

Which is why I always say travel wherever you can, while you can.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next Post in this Series: Sunday, November 19th at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST

Excerpt 2.0 from Carry-On Only: Enlightenment in India

Around the time when celebrities (notably Madonna and Alanis Morissette) were finding enlightenment and sometimes even themselves in India—and singing about it, I had the chance to go there.

Through a Rotary Foundation program called Group Study Exchange (GSE), I spent six weeks in India as a photojournalist. The primary purpose of the GSE program was to give young professionals a vocational opportunity abroad during the early stages of their career.

My GSE training instructor said over and over again, “GSE will change your life.” As it was, I wanted my life to change, so I said “Giddyup.” And a truly life-changing experience it was.

The program allowed me to practice my profession in India while visiting many Rotary-sponsored humanitarian programs. The selection committee decided that it would be a good idea to send a man to keep an eye on the four women selected. Not surprisingly, he was the highest-maintenance one of all.

We stayed with a variety of different hosts and in many ways, got to see the “real” India through these families and the philanthropic matching-grant programs we visited. Slated in my memory are homes for the homeless, polio health centers, schools and the most heart-wrenching: the well-run orphanages with tons of children excited to have foreign guests visit them.

The sheer density of humanity in India is a shock to the senses. Witnessing it as it relates to poverty and particularly to children in need, takes it to a whole new level. I have always hoped to return to India to visit and return to the orphanages. In a sense, this is where I reconsidered having children – not having them myself, but adopting or supporting their growth and education on a larger level.

I loved my host families – all of them. The hospitality in India was unparalleled. The colors, fabrics, life and energy of one billion people add an element to everyday life that you don’t come across often. I was enthralled with the textiles, fashion, interior design elements and group culture, which was very different from what I was used to.

When I got sick from the antiquated anti-malarial medication I was prescribed in the U.S., I learned that my conflict-resolution style is avoidance and that I hated yoga. I disliked a certain member’s behavior on my GSE team. While I personally liked and got along well with him in the United States, he was the quintessential “ugly American” abroad and lacked the ability to follow the rules of engagement as “ambassadors” from the U.S. He was disrespectful to our hosts and it irritated the rest of us. Ironically, he was also the one who got us all signed up for the 6:30 a.m. class of The Art of Living every morning.

Cursing in downward dog, I learned that what I didn’t know about spirituality and acceptance was a lot.

At this point, I didn’t have a country number goal in mind — I was simply happy to travel as much as possible. Getting away, immersing myself, adapting to a new perspective and seeing things differently sealed my travel addiction. How else can you do that? There isn’t a prescription or even a street drug that can give you that experience.

I started journaling while in India and through this, I discovered that I really wanted a studio in Chicago. My favorite time in London was working in the studios in Back Hill, Farringdon. I loved creating in the studio and it was where I felt most in my element. It took a while and a leap off of a major cliff, but I did it.

I felt like an entirely different person when my time in India ended – a world apart from where I started. It was as if I had Stage 4 emphysema and my lungs were now clear.

It was an energetic up-leveling. I felt that anything was possible and that if I made the leap, the universe would conspire in my favor a la Goethe. How long in the Midwest would it take before that feeling died? I came back glowing. I had finally settled in and could really think about what my next moves would be.

To date, that was the biggest transformation I’ve felt from a trip. I love Indian culture, people and life. I loved the grit. It changed what I thought was possible and how I went about visualizing, meditating and journaling what I wanted – a practice that I continue to rely on heavily in work and life. I also had a huge connection to the orphaned children and dreamed of one day leaving everything behind and becoming headmaster at the one of orphanages we visited. I loved the children’s energy, their potential, and their unbiased outlook on the world.

In their eyes, I saw myself, and to some extent, the struggle of their fate as they would become single women in the world having to make their own way and support themselves in a culture that made it challenging. It felt like my purpose was to make that road easier for them in whatever way I could.

Ironically, as deeply as I was drawn to the orphanage and caring for children, the idea of marriage and having my own kids meant the end of life to me. The end of freedom. The end of travel. A life of misery, self-sacrifice and occasional trips to Chuck E. Cheese. To avoid this, I sought out the best love avoidants I could find in order to protect myself from the alternative fate.

India was eye-opening in many ways and really where I became one with the idea of becoming a full-time professional photographer. During my visit I focused on shooting humanitarian projects and a series on “Fashion in the Making,” which chronicled the process from cotton farming through textile weaving to garment design. The series was later featured at the Apple store in Chicago as a part of a live fashion show.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next Post in this Series: Sunday, November 12th at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST

Excerpt 1.0 from Carry-On Only: Starting Point - The Middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin

The frost crystals had barely melted off the leaves when the humidity rose to 110 percent. It was June 1977 and the air was hot and thick. Bell-bottoms curled and polyester leisure suits suddenly seemed like a bad idea. In this nook of nowhere, spanning quadrants of farm fields speckled with bars and churches, I was brought into the world — and, it seemed, not without a purpose.

Extended family came to visit, armed with Midwest delicacies: casseroles and slow cooker recipes that even Campbell’s couldn’t have concocted. Desserts carefully crafted from cereals were limited only by one’s imagination and the General Mills product line.

My 7-year -old sister carefully eyed up the goods and allowed VIP admission to those with chocolate-based treats, not yet sure how she would manage the dubious task of having a younger sister.

Local beer, Milwaukee’s Best, flowed freely from the taps. Towns were named longingly after their European counterparts: New London, Krakow, Luxemburg, Denmark and Belgium. Rod Stewart and Andy Gibb blared from radios and 8-track players — the last hope of an actual British Invasion.

My childhood was, by all intents and purposes, perfectly normal. I was a Girl Scout, went to church, inattentively babysat the neighbor kids, flogged pizzas for fund-raisers, waitressed at a chain restaurant and participated in school sports. But come age 15, I was running out of things to do at a very rapid pace.

As if being from the agrarian countryside wasn’t enough of a buzzkill, I was raised Catholic — which only exacerbated the already limited hope of inspired fun and feminine adventure. The misogyny was so thick you could cut it with a knife. It was a B.S. structure I saw coming from a mile away. I remember sitting in church at age 8, thinking it seemed extremely convenient that a woman birthed and raised Jesus and he got all the credit. And clearly, a higher power would have picked out a better wardrobe for his/her modern day disciples, procured palatable wine and traded communion for French petit fours.

I had lots of ideas for the Catholic church. Sadly, none of which found an audience.

I waitressed at Shoney’s, manning service for the infamous Sunday buffet where carbs of every order were offered to tide patrons over for the next four hours of pre-Packer tailgating. The overzealous owner, Shawn, trained us to sell Tropicana orange juice like it was Dom Perignon. At the time, Red Lobster was Green Bay’s virtual French Laundry, so I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

In high school, you could be in one of several sports. If you didn’t fit the bill of mid-American life driven by football, basketball or baseball, you were S.O.L. Fortunately, I was on the pom pom squad — a sport created to help women sweat while remaining in the confines of their preconceived gender roles. Social conservatism ruled, because who could afford to live outside of the box? Outliers were not welcome here.

My goal was to move as far away as possible, never get married or have kids, and savor the immense freedom and opportunity that I could feel was right around the corner. My classmates were on to me and I was voted “most likely to move the farthest away.” I was also voted “most likely to have the most number of spouses.” To date, I have had the least.

Green Bay didn’t have enough people to merit a census count, but it somehow managed to wrangle its own NFL team and it wasn’t about to let it go. Locals lived and died for the Packers. Green and gold dominated wardrobes the way cheese and potato chips dominated the tops of casseroles. Watching football wasn’t just something to do — it was the only thing to do. It was and is Wisconsin’s raison d’être.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Midwest. It’s home to the friendliest, nicest, most genuine, down-to-earth people in the world. But as my writing coach says, no one wants to hear about the village of the happy people, so I’ll stop there.

I’m very grateful for my parents, family, friends and grounded upbringing. I wouldn’t change it for the world. But it was definitely time to get the show on the road.

It was killing me to find out what was behind door #2, and it appeared from pictures that every place outside of here was more exciting. Not to mention, I never really fit in in the first place. A gluten-free, dairy-free, non-sports lover born on the Midwestern axis of beer, cheese and Packers? All traits punishable by law, I was born treasonous.

Spain: My Gateway Drug

During my junior year of high school, the chance to go to Spain with a group of students from Milwaukee came up. It was a no-brainer. I would have jumped at the chance to go to Detroit. Selective, I was not. I was Spanish student of the year, three consecutive years in a row. (Full disclosure: I was the only person in the class for the last two years.) I wasn’t sure what to pack for the trip, so I grossly over-packed. My suitcase weighed more than I did — a rookie error that I did not repeat. I had no idea what to expect, but I was excited as hell.

Landing in Madrid was surreal. It was the outside world I had always imagined. The country mouse finally got her chance at city life.

I felt like Margaret Mead uncovering western civilization. I had only read about culture, art museums, theater, music, traffic, public transportation, ethnic foods, diversity, things to do, a community, buildings and architecture. Seeing it all in a foreign country instantly confirmed what I had been missing. Travel meant a chance at seeing the way the other 99 percent lived. Wine, disco piscinas, hot Latin guys, limited chaperones and being with other travelers — where had I been? I lived on adrenaline the whole trip. I loved everything.

Variety. Interest. Culture. Fortunately, from my current position, everywhere in comparison was unbelievably exciting. Nothing was taken for granted. I was armed with the ability to create my own fun in almost any circumstance. It was pure validation that there was so much more out there to see and do. This trip was my gateway drug.

This blog is an excerpt from Carry On Only: Confessions from 100 Countries. To purchase the digital book, please click here - or to have more vicarious adventures with Jill Paider, please click here.

Next Post in this Series: Sunday, November 5th at 10 a.m. EST / 9 a.m. CST /  7 a.m. PST