Getting started sounds so easy – but for millions of aspiring artists and creatives, the uncertainty of the path forward presents a very real challenge. So, we wanted to gather some artists and creatives we admire to open up about their experience and how they think about whether they should have started sooner or waited for a better time.

Melissa Banczak

Oh if I could go back. I always wanted to write but I could never make myself sit still long enough to get any of the stories in my head down on the page. I had no computer and writing by hand just wasn’t cutting it. When I finally could afford a PC in the early 90s, I suddenly had a job. A friend’s literary agent needed a reader. Less than a year later, I was an agent and all of my time was focused on getting my client’s work out there. When the agency closed, after the owner retired, I was so burnt out, it was more than a year before I could read anything longer than the text on the back of a cereal box. I didn’t even have characters living out their lives in my head anymore. Read more>>

Caitlin Rutherford

If I could go back in time, I would have started my creative journey sooner rather than later. I started my creative journey in 2020 during Covid when I had a ton of free time while doing college from home. I do wish I had started earlier in the creative process but, during Covid I had so much time to create and take a ton of content it may have been the perfect time for me to start my creative journey. I originally started out with posting for fun and eventually it turned into a side hustle where I began working with multiple companies whether it was in the fields of fashion, beauty, wellness, and other random categories. Read more>>

Kate Nafuna

I wish I had started my creative career sooner.
I started making films in 2021 at the age of 30 during the COVID 19 lock down.
I was an Administrator at Kampala Film School, and i was making paper bags to earn a living during the lock down. one of my colleagues at work, advised me to tell a story visually about how the lock down has affected me. I gave it a try with a short documentary, and boom, four years later, i have have five films to my name, thanks to the lock-down! Read more>>

Jacob Scully

I think it’s worked out as it needed to. I’ve always wanted to play music and write songs but getting my degree and training to become a therapist has been very rewarding. I always said my degree was my fall back plan but it’s worked out well. If I started music sooner I don’t think I would have appreciated it the same nor would I have had the same opportunity to work with Nate or Gabe in the capacity we’ve been able to when we did. Read more>>

Jean Reinhold

I spent 38 years teaching. First in Dade County Public Schools in Miami, Florida, then at a small private school where I started the program for gifted students in University Heights, Ohio. Then I landed at Fernway School in Shaker Heights, OH for the largest hunk of my career, 35 years. Read more>>

Marco Hurtado

Even back when I was in high school, there was pressure to figure out your career and college choices. I first thought I would become a medical doctor so as to help people. But it turns out that I hated Chemistry and Chemistry despised me even more. I quickly had to find another major and stumbled on accounting. It was something I understood fairly easily and would provide for a solid career. Fast forward after almost 30 years of public accounting, internal audit and IT compliance, I was victim of corporate reorganization at a major pharmaceutical company. I was laid off after 23 years with the company. Initially, I felt betrayed and my confidence was shaken. However, it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. Read more>>

Yuni Fei

If we consider career as doing something professionally, I think it’s definitely possible to start too soon. I started basically after I graduated high school, and my social life essentially plummeted as a result. Everyone I worked with are usually 10 to 20 years older than me, so I didn’t have anyone to relate with, and everyone my age are busy with college, so for about 5 years I was basically isolated, stuck at home, doing nothing but work. It was miserable. Read more>>

Patrick Sasso

I am always creating. I don’t remember one single moment I wasn’t either thinking about my next work or doing something about my next work. I almost can’t concentrate on anything else. I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t creating something.

When I was about 4 my grandfather gave us a piano he salvaged from the junkyard. I was told that I would keep going back and sitting at the piano to plunk out tunes I heard on Bugs Bunny cartoons. They gave me lessons and I took to them after about the third teacher whom I’d stuck with until I was about 18. Read more>>

Haley Schulz

I don’t spend much time wondering about what could have been, but I do wish I had kept creating beyond my high school and college years instead of stepping away from visual arts almost entirely during my 20s. At the time, work, travel, and relationships took priority, and I was searching for something in myself that—looking back—I think making more art would have helped me find sooner. Read more>>

Tamara Shibata

In September of 2022, I was let go from my 9-5 job (that I kind of hated but was paying the bills) and decided to go full-time with my small business. Up to that point, I had spent a couple years building Woven Handmade, my clay earring and macrame accessory business. I was doing makers markets every weekend and basically spending every free moment creating. Looking back, my fear of the unknown was really what held me back from going full-time. I was overwhelmed with the legalities of owning a small business, dealing with taxes and permits, licenses, and having my livelihood really dependent on my personal creativity. Read more>>

Lori Cortese-buckheit

I have no regrets about when I started my acting career. I truly believe that God has a path for each of us, and if this dream had been meant to take shape sooner, it would have. I wasn’t ready for my voice to be heard any earlier, and I trust that everything unfolded exactly as it was meant to. Read more>>

Mercedez Brust

I had gone to school for Illustration and Game Design from 2014-2019, during that time I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. I had dreams of learning to tattoo but wasn’t sure what that path would be. Also, everyone told me I needed to go to college, that that decision was the most important thing I could do during that time. So, I went through my schooling trying to figure out what I could do and sort of trying to figure out what my career would be. Read more>>

Matt Troise

I wish that I started creating content years before I actually did. YouTube had already launched 5 years before I started posting videos of my daily life and experiences living in Brooklyn, New York. Little did I know, my life wouldn’t seem to be that interesting as I would struggle to even get a couple views. There was a feature on YouTube where you could make a time capsule video and have it become public in 10 years. I made this video, and I was hoping that I would have 1,000 subscribers 10 years from the date. Read more>>