Creative Share Compass

This blog entry is the first in a series of multimedia interviews titled “Real World Stories from the Creative Economy.”

My first guest is a good friend and neighbor from Portland (Maine) — Daniel Reardon.

Dan was the former CEO of Bass Shoes (a $400 million division of the Phillip Van Heusen corporation) and is currently a senior business consultant to L.L. Bean. He also developed and managed the retail operation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for three years. Dan is an avid art collector and a longtime supporter of organizations that serve at-risk youth.

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Related Audio

Introducing Dan Reardon (1:38)

The Community College System and Auto Dealerships (3:36)

What’s Next?(5:00)

Connection to Community and Closing Words (0:50)

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Images from the Interview

Summertime! And the livin’ is easy…

At least according to the words of the old George Gershwin song. And even the most inveterate workaholics and hard-chargers among us usually still take a week (or a few three-day weekends) off during the dog days of August.

Whether we end up on a beach or mountaintop, or simply at a friend’s backyard patio, there is some breathing space.

This fleeting hiatus of quiet allows us to disconnect from the seductive world of electronic media and enter a childhood place of printed words.

We can choose to turn off the laptop computer, iPhone, Blackberry, iPod, radio, and TV (yes, it is possible) and try to hear that small still voice inside of us…and let it mingle with the voice of a truly gifted author.

We can use the author’s musings to create our own imaginary dramas, meaningful dialogues, and stories. Every reader is a co-author of the book he or she is reading—not just a passive recipient of moving images and external soundtracks.

We must create the pictures and narratives in our own heads from our own life experiences, and not rely on Hollywood or Madison Ave. for our internal messaging.

Here is an eclectic palette of titles that might lure you to an armchair. They are all old friends of mine. Most of these books were given to me over the years by beloved relatives, teachers, dear friends, and a few just popped into my life through chance encounters and serendipity.

All the titles are available through Amazon; and most can be purchased used (good-as-new) for a pittance!

The books are loosely grouped into the following categories—The Creative Life, Personal Finance & Investment, Picture Books for Adults, Picture Books For Kids (of all ages), Innovation & Change, Dated but Wonderful Odds & Ends.

The Creative Life

The Elephant & the Flea: Reflections of a Reluctant Capitalist by Charles Handy. The dilemmas and delights of the creative flea in a world of organizational elephants are explored and explained. It is listed first for a reason!

The View From the Studio Door: How Artists Find Their Way in an Uncertain World by Ted Orland. Wise, real, and low key. It offers some genuinely helpful and even healing insights. (Incidentally, Orland was Ansel Adam’s studio assistant).

The Art Spirit by Robert Henri. Perhaps the best book ever written by a major American artist. I loved this slender volume when I was an art student 40 years ago and still return to it for inspiration.

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence, and Spirit by Brenda Ueland. This is not a how-to book but a how-to-be-yourself classic. It was written 70 years ago and is still totally relevant to those of us who need and want to write.

Art & Fear: On the Perils (and rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. I picked this book up at the Maine Photographic Workshop a few years ago and still can’t put it down.

The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Small Island by Linda Greenlaw. This slice of life from a rough and remote Maine island says volumes about what we have lost and gained in our headlong pursuit of riches. This book is suitable for ardent feminists, tough guys, and anyone who has dreamed of abandoning the rat race.

Personal Finance & Investment

The Little Book on Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns by John Bogle. I always felt that John Bogle (founder of Vanguard) did more to promote human well being than Mother Theresa. His development of ultra-low cost stock market index funds has been a boon to millions of small, middleclass investors.

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William Bernstein. The author is both a Ph.D. and an M.D., and a longtime student of financial markets and human behavior. His section on “Why investors lose money” is worth the price of the book many times over.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Completely Revised and Updated by Burton Malkiel. This Princeton professor’s description of a chimpanzee throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal as an investment strategy is hysterically funny, and statistically sound. The book was first published in 1973 and is now in its 7th publication.

The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future by Burns and Kotlikoff. This book is scarier than anything Steven King ever wrote—and it is published by the MIT Press. The basic premise is that old, unproductive, and ailing boomers will doom the American economy by 2030—unless there are drastic changes in public policy initiated right now. This is absolute essential reading for any young adult—and for their parents who are NOT interested in squandering their kids’ inheritance and shot at the American dream.

Zen and the Art of Earning a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design by Laurence Boldt. This is a career book that will appeal to your inner hippie. Lots of great “zenny” philosophy, stories, quotes, and ink drawings. But Boldt is no dolt; both of his feet are on solid economic ground. And his cold, clear eyes look on human blindness without blinking.

Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life by Marc Freedman. This is a career book that will appeal to any aging yuppie. Although Freedman is making a highly promoted career out of advising befuddled but highly educated boomers about what comes next, it is a worthwhile endeavor. All kids of boomers should buy their parents a copy of this book. If the 75,000,000 grayheads don’t keep working and contributing to society, we (collectively) are toast.

Innovation & Change

Innovation & Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker. The author is widely considered the greatest management thinker of the 20th century. This classic business book is essential reading for any young person who wants to go out and change the world.

Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility by Stewart Brand. In 1969, I was a nineteen-year-old straight-arrow youth from suburban Chicago—and then I came across a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog. The WEC was the brainchild of another suburban Chicago guy named Stewart Brand. His oversized, softcover catalog literally blew me away (and millions of other young people as well). I bumped into Stewart about two years ago at the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine. His new “legacy” book and chronological project is of vital importance to the world. American post-industrial culture has lost its sense of time, responsibility, and place in nature. Unfortunately, the media is not paying attention this time around.

The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent by Richard Florida. This once obscure professor of economic development became rich and famous from a book with a catchy title—“The Rise of the Creative Class.” As one of the few artists that actually read Florida’s bestseller cover to cover, I was left curiously lukewarm by his blandishments. Ironically, the concept of the flight of the creative class has real gravitas and urgency, and the media and policy wonks are not paying much attention to this important book. Young creative people better choose their zip codes very carefully!

Picture Books for Adults

The Family of Man by Edward Steichen. It is the catalog of the greatest photographic exhibition of all time.

A Summer’s Day by Joel Meyerowitz. Most creative young people know Meyerowitz’s photography through “Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive.” His documentation of the 9/11 disaster is monumental and heartbreaking; but I am still drawn to his classic images of Cape Cod. The sunlight is like no other. His luminous photos will make you happy.

Picture Books for Kids (of all ages)

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. I was mesmerized by this book as a child, and still try to heed its sage advice: to live by the sea and make the world a more beautiful place. Perhaps it should be the official book of the creative economy movement.

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. If the adult world is getting you down, simply read this book out loud to a young child. Life will become a wildly creative, exciting, and magical adventure for both of you!

The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can!” No better advice can be given to a human being of any age.

Dated but Wonderful Odds & Ends

The Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute. The author is mostly remembered for his harrowing tale of a post-nuclear holocaust world, On The Beach. His first novel was about a mechanically gifted but unassuming miniature model maker and technical writer. The protagonist must leave his safe haven in England and go out into the world to seek his orphaned niece’s inheritance. It is a sweet story. Decency wins out in the end. How is that for a ludicrous post-modern literary premise?

Fables for Our Time by James Thurber. These short vignettes are models of sly humor, stylish wordplay, and sad wisdom about the folly and foolishness of human nature. Thurber’s illustrations are pure delight.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

Have a great summer vacation; and try to spend some free time with a real live book!

Question: What is the difference between a recession and a depression?

Answer: In a recession, I have a job and you don’t. During a depression, you are gainfully employed and I’m pounding the pavement (or web) for work.

For most of us, it is as good an answer as the one provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research:
“A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough.”

Thank you Wikipedia.

Here are some things to consider about creatively finessing the “Big R” from someone who has experienced and survived uncertain and difficult financial times and lived to write about it:

Realize that all economic down turns eventually bottom out and things get better.

History suggests that most down economic cycles take anywhere from two to seven years to run their course. Ironically, it is at the point of maximum pessimism where the real opportunities are often found.

When you start to hear everyone blabbing about the “greener pastures/heavens on earth” that are to be found in Tennessee, North Carolina, North Georgia, and Las Vegas, it might be the time to both roll your eyes and take out your checkbook.

Start researching local real estate opportunities, broad-based stock indexes and mutual funds, and the possibility of starting a creative business; you can enjoy warm winters and rent cheap studio or office space.

The trick is to have cash or a secure line of credit during a major downturn or panic. But it takes nerve and a basic optimism about the future.

Had I invested in Portland (Oregon) in 1974, Berkeley (CA) in 1975, or NYC in 1979, I’d be a very rich man today.

But at the time, I could not see beyond my current circumstances as a struggling young artist and designer; or really believe that things could change for the better. It was a story of wasted opportunities.

Fortunately, I did buy in St. Pete in 2004. Not at the top or the bottom of the real estate curve.

If you can entertain a 10- to 12-year timeframe, there is more than a reasonable chance that the creative economy will prosper in the Tampa Bay. That is why Amy and I are not planning on selling and moving on when things eventually improve in the real estate market.

Understand and accept the three basic realities of life as a creative worker or entrepreneur in a free market economy:

1. When the mainstream economy catches cold, advertising, architecture, publishing, journalism, public relations, and cultural institutions and organizations tend to get triple pneumonia.
2. Even during hard times, most people are still working. (Think educators and administrators, police and fire fighters, healthcare workers from doctors to janitors, civil servants, members of the armed forces, etc.)
3. Many professionals are likely to prosper no matter what happens. This includes upscale surgeons and psychiatrists, bankruptcy lawyers and business turn-around specialists, astute financial speculators who know a bargain when they see one, financial planners to the worried-but-well-off, and of course, sympathetic bar tenders and smiling waiters who cater to both the haves and have-nots.

You are not your job description or resume. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of a severe recession is the assault and insult to our sense of self-worth. If one’s creative services or artifacts are not required in the marketplace at a particular moment, we might take it very personally. Too personally, in fact.

Fortunately, we can always be good parents, friends, and relatives no matter what the masters-of-the-universe on Wall Street, at the Federal Reserve Bank and, increasingly, in corridors of power in China and Saudi Arabia are cooking up for the world economy.

I suppose it boils down to not putting all one’s emotional eggs in the same basket. The role of chance and randomness in human existence suggests that having a strong and variegated social network is the only financial security that is available to most us.

Lighten up about your personal plans and goals in an increasingly complex, computerized, and unpredictable global economy.

As Americans, we are heirs to the hard and harsh ethos of Puritan, frontier, and immigrant cultures. It is not easy for many of us to even momentarily relax our guard. So I am concluding with one of my favorite jokes:

One day out of the blue, God tells all the world’s senior TV executives that the earth is going to end in a great global tidal wave that will drown every living person in just 59 minutes.

There is absolutely no time to build any arks this time around.

When British citizens hear this dire message from a legitimate news sources, they quietly get dressed in their best clothes, form straight lines in front of Buckingham Palace, stand at attention with a stiff upper lips, and calmly prepare for their eminent demise.

The French, upon learning of their terrible fate, hop into bed with their lovers for one last amorous embrace.

When Americans learn of the impending disaster, they drive off to to buy snorkels and scuba gear!

In post-Katrina America, this joke is not quite as funny as it once was. But fortunately, we are still a nation of pragmatic and creative problem-solvers, not slackers.

For more comic relief, enjoy this parody by Columbia Business School’s Dean Glenn Hubbard and students about wanting Alan Greenspan’s job, which went instead to New Fed Chair Ben Bernanke.

Let’s do a quick demographic survey of the Tampa Bay area:

How many people from Ohio have you met? From the Midwest in general? Children or grandchildren of Midwesterners?

I’ve counted 64. Make that 65, counting myself.

In fact, it seems that just about everyone I meet here is originally from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, western Pennsylvania, or western New York state. Although Tampa Bay is about as far south into the continental United States as one can get geographically, it feels in many ways like my hometown of Highland Park, Ill., in suburban Chicago—but with palm trees.

Professional demographers say that there are at least 27 identifiable ethnic groups in the Tampa Bay area, and I believe them. But still, I know when I’m back home. Most people I meet seem friendly, smile, say “please” and “thank you,” and don’t litter.

My wife Amy, who has roots in D.C. and New York City, finds these instances of civic virtue a constant source of amazement.

For me, it’s simply how daily life once was in this country, and how it sometimes still is.

Last year, I dined with a fellow late 50-something Midwesterner who is a truly gifted poet and performer. Although he looked and played the part of the aging hipster, I knew from his recent performance at the State Theater in St. Pete that his wildly imaginative torrent of words was grounded in workaday reality and traditional American morality.

He rhapsodized and ranted at a huge, variegated audience of hundreds of tattooed and pierced 20-somethings and more conventional gray-headed baby boomers. He spared the delicate feelings of no one in the auditorium. In a nutshell: life is hard; marriage is difficult; raising kids is tough; a job will wear you out; an honest dollar is hard to come by in both the rust belt of the Midwest and in Florida.

But that is how it is. So suck it up and get back to work and your obligations.

Here was a man who was groomed from childhood to assume adult responsibilities as both a reliable worker and engaged citizen. There is a nobility to this that dwarfs the self-involvement and narcissism of so much of American life and careerism for the last thirty or forty years.

After exchanging the usual “guy” chitchat about our kids, our wives, our athletic prowess and injuries, we settled into an unexpected conversation about how great it was to have grown up in the Midwest in the ’50s and early ’60s.

We conversed nostalgically about how normal, secure, safe, and community-centered our young lives seemed back then. There was time to build snow forts and tree houses after school. And there were often sit-down family dinners without a blaring TV.

Then came the 1960s with the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, the tragedy at Kent State, the Vietnam War, urban riots, Mai Lai, Watergate, The Pill, The Beatles, hippies, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and the first signs of the coming de-industrialization of our once-great manufacturing nation. Fast-forward 30 years. By the mid-90s, many of us were chronically worried working stiffs. We quietly fretted about job security, paying for our children’s college tuition, insanely inflated home prices, escalating energy prices, and the chaotic state of the world.

The bubble burst in the Midwest just like everywhere else across the country.

Our youthful hopes and idealism seemed to have evaporated from our collective baby boomer brains. We weren’t able to live the lives our parents had in the suburbs of Chicago, Des Moines, or Toledo.

So now you might be expecting some sort of self-righteous sermon about how everything was great in “Leave it to Beaver Land” and that now the country is going to the dogs.

Hardly.

Nostalgia is most often the unconscious reframing of unpleasant memories and feelings from the past into something more palatable. The fondly recalled golden dreams of youth are perfectly harmless occasional entertainment. But realistically, things were never that great in the past nor are they so terrible in the present.

In any event, the new millennium is different and more complex than the old. And we must cope with a global economy and multiracial society as it is, and not waste our precious time daydreaming.

The Tampa Bay metropolitan area embodies the New America, with all its warts and promise for the future. I-75 permanently connects the core values of this region to the geographic and spiritual center of the United States.

I believe that this deep and dynamic connection to our national heartland will be the anchor chain of our civil society in the tumultuous and surprising decades ahead.

The CreativeShare Blog is a place to find catalytic people, ideas, and resources.

Our first creative catalysts and CreativeShare Fellows are Mark Sforzini and Nancy 3. Hoffman.

Both are accomplished musicians and valued colleagues. They embody the collaborative and generous spirit that is at the heart of the CreativeShare venture. Mark is currently working on an opera loosely based on The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Nancy 3. is engaged in performing with both her klezmer and accordion bands, and collecting umbrella covers for the one and only umbrella cover museum in the world!

Another key concern of this blog is the connection between a healthy natural environment and sustainable creative lives. Here is a link to the rustic CreativeShare Studio that is located on a tiny island off the coast of Maine.

Moving on to the subject of the global environment and climate change, here is a web link and MP3 file on the Earth Charter U.S. The interview is with Jan Roberts, president of the organization.

It is also my pleasure to introduce two young poets and performance artists — Pedro Jarquin and Jeffrey James. They created the soundtrack to the award-winning video Torn Asunder, which deals with an increasingly frayed American civil society.

Also included is a highly amusing audio performance by Pedro (voice & lyrics) and Mark Maynor (music & mix) on global warming. It is titled “Stop Light.”

My favorite definition of “catalyst” is a person whose talk, enthusiasm, or energy causes others to be more friendly, enthusiastic, energetic, and creative.

For me, CreativeShare is the continuing realization of 35 years of collaboration, musings, messy mishaps, occasional successes, and continuing interaction and experimentation with an ever-expanding creative circle of colleagues and friends.

I hope that the ideas, art, and music on this Web site will tickle your fancy and encourage you to create with others.

When I was a little boy many long years ago, my favorite song was “Home on the Range.” (MP3)

The words and melody still reverberate in my head (although I don’t wear my Davy Crockett coonskin cap and Gene Autry spurs in public anymore).

The particular lyrical refrain of “Where seldom is heard a discouraging word / And the skies are not cloudy all day” is quite relevant to our lives as creative adults — sans cowboy or cowgirl paraphernalia.
Unfortunately, many of us work in an environment where often is heard a discouraging word and encouraging words are seldom bestowed. This is a genuine pity.

Real encouragement does not cost money, and it takes little in the way of either time or effort but can yield tangible creative rewards all around.

Recently the power of encouraging words was brought home to me by two unexpected events.

First, I received an e-mail from out of the blue thanking me for making possible a highly successful twenty-year career in advertising and public relations. The name of the writer did not ring a bell, and I had no recollection of telling this stranger to go into advertising and public relations.

Here is what happened. In 1984, my wife, Amy, and I sponsored a citywide poetry competition called “Philadelphia Voices and Visions.” We got some stellar entries, mostly from grad students, librarians, community activists, and teachers. Apparently, at the awards party, a young and unassuming woman asked me what she could do to earn money when the only thing that she was good at was writing poems. I must have told her that she had the requisite talent for a career in the ad and PR biz, and she must have believed it.

Two decades later, she is a senior manager at one of Philadelphia’s top communications firms and works on major international accounts. Go figure!

A second fortuitous event occurred when Amy and I wandered into a premier Philly art gallery about three years ago. We were greeted by some really large, eye-catching watercolor paintings. By chance, the artist was there — she was one of our first major clients in the early ’80s. I had not seen her for close to fifteen years.

Our client had been a high-level manager in Philadelphia city government. How did she move from spotless business apparel to a paint-stained t-shirt? Apparently, it was because of something I told her years and years ago — and I have no memory of it whatsoever.

Although her first career was devoted to management, she had graduated from art school in the 1960s. When we worked together in the mid-’80s, she was professionally successful and respected, but lamented to me that her creativity and artistic abilities had evaporated under the constant pressures of the office and being a mom.

Apparently, I told her that our creativity and artistic talent never leave us, although they can go dormant for decades. Just get a little watercolor pad and fool around in odd unoccupied moments and, if you can, go to an artists’ colony like the Vermont Studio Center for a creative sojourn.

At any rate, our former client is now a full-time painter (with a city pension) who is earning between $20,000 and $30,000 a year doing something truly creative. One never knows where encouraging words might lead people over time.

Conversely, I will never really know (nor will you) what one’s discouraging words have done to others.

All of our “constructive” criticisms, dire warnings, petty cruelties, and mindless morsels of sarcasm have most assuredly diminished the creative potential of those around us.

For the heck of it, try bestowing some sincere and encouraging words on your family members, friends, and colleagues — then watch their faces soften and shine.

You may have opened some previously shut doors inside them. And they just might walk through those invisible portals to something better for themselves and society.

I will get to the gorilla later. Let me begin by talking about luck…especially your luck over the past ten years.

Virtually all of us have been to a school reunion or large family event over the past decade. It is easy to have been both attracted to and envious of those folks who are leading seemingly charmed lives.

These fortunate relatives, friends, and colleagues have fulfilling careers, happy personal lives, and good health. They radiate a sense of well-being and quiet confidence. Then there are the chronically unlucky. They are often conspicuous at these gatherings by their absence. Their lives appear to be a continuous series of mishaps, muddles, and misadventures.

I have always found it ironic that both my lucky and unlucky acquaintances often share nearly identical educations, IQs, physical statures, and family backgrounds. How do you explain the differences in life outcomes?

Fate. Chance. Love Potion #9!

Dr. Richard Wiseman, a distinguished British research psychologist and former professional magician, believes he has the answer to the riddle of how we create good luck and bad luck in our lives. It involves our perception of reality and of ourselves.

Here is the gorilla story:

Serious academic behavioral scientists created a videotape of people playing basketball. They asked subjects to count the number of passes made by one of the teams. More than half of the observers failed to notice a woman dressed in a gorilla suit who walked slowly across the scene for nine seconds. What was especially curious is that the hairy beast faced the camera and thumped her chest. This experiment has been repeated with large public groups where only 10 percent of those present saw the gorilla.

Basically, we see only what we are looking for…and little else.

Check out this amusing but highly informative interview with Dr. Wiseman, conducted by Dan Pink, from the archives of Fast Company magazine.

The article also contains the funniest joke in the world, according to Dr. Wiseman, who spent a year researching the subject.

Here are Wiseman’s four scientifically identified luck factors that can create good fortune in your life and career. They are commonsense and a little "self-helpy" but worth considering. We all could use a little more luck with our creative ventures.

1. Maximize Chance Opportunities
Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing, and acting upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, such as building and maintaining a strong network, adopting a relaxed attitude toward life, and being open to new experiences.

2. Listen to Your Lucky Hunches
Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. They also take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities — for example, by meditating and clearing their minds of other thoughts.

3. Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people are certain that the future will be bright. Over time, that expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it helps lucky people persist in the face of failure and positively shapes their interactions with other people.

4. Turn Bad Luck into Good
Lucky people employ various psychological techniques to cope with and even thrive on the ill fortune that comes their way. For example, they spontaneously imagine how things could have been worse, they don’t dwell on the ill fortune, and they take control of the situation.

Daniel H. Pink, author of Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself (Warner Business Books, 2002), is writing a book about the rise of right-brained thinking in modern life. He considers himself one lucky guy. For more information on the Luck Project, visit www.luckfactor.co.uk.

Each spring around graduation time, I am cornered by the anxious parents of highly creative kids. Their innovative offspring are graduating from high school, college, or art school and simply don’t have a clue about jobs, career prospects, who to talk to, or what to do next.

Generally, the inventive young folks seem pretty relaxed about their future. But appearances are deceptive. The cool hauteur is usually a mask for considerable youthful insecurity. They need and want specific guidance — not a lot of pious platitudes.

Their worldly parents, however, are often on the verge of a major meltdown. These worries are grounded in reality, but it is an old and increasingly obsolete reality. The economy is simply becoming a lot more hospitable to highly skilled, creative people.

The following observations are the products of much personal experience — some painful, some exhilarating. But most of all, they come from the careful observation of literally hundreds of creative people in many domains of creative endeavor.

My purpose in compiling this list is to help young people employ their talents to benefit both society and themselves. I hope the following will be a practical help in navigating the ever-mercurial creative marketplace.

The list is long and involved and requires real effort on the reader’s part. But it might very well spell the difference between success or failure in an emerging creative career.

Also, my voice shifts casually between talking to the parent and talking to the young adult. I did this on purpose — I want you to read and discuss the points together!

1. There are no “Creative Commandments.” But there are mindsets, behaviors, skills, and role models that can enhance your chances of earning a reasonable living and finding a place for yourself in the brutally competitive creative economy. Go to the bottom of this column for a list of superb books that you should at least peruse. (Links to Amazon.com have been provided.)
2. If you choose to “follow your bliss,” use common sense! Most of the blissed-out creative types that I have come across are broke, bewildered, and many times married and divorced. Bliss is a great way to choose a hobby, but not a great way to strategize a career. The gist of the matter is serving other people for money — not finding personal nirvana.
3. Extroverts/optimists tend to thrive in American society; introverts/pessimists tend to have a fairly miserable time. But even if you are a born wallflower or have a pronounced dark side, you must learn to schmooze, i.e., make charming small talk. Basically, it is just a matter of practice and attending an improv workshop or two. If you take a sincere interest in other people’s stories and become a good listener, you can function socially. The other viable alternative is to get an agent or a socially adept mate, if the opportunity presents itself.
4. Drugs and alcohol are no-nos. Although I was no fan of Nancy Reagan, she had a point with her “Just Say No” campaign. Dopers and drunks can be moderately amusing in small doses, but for the most part, they are pathetic and incorrigible. Even if they somehow manage to function on a high level professionally, the people around them usually suffer a lot. Learn to manage stress, depression, and anxiety in a more healthful manner. The Jackson Pollock–Ernest Hemingway–Edgar Allan Poe–Sylvia Plath–Britney Spears–Judy Garland lifestyle can be terribly painful and lonely.
5. Say YES to broccoli and a brisk walk. It is often hard for young, time-pressured creative arts and design students to make time to eat sensibly and to exercise. The youthful body can function at a high level of sexuality, energy, and mental acuity with a doughnut, a cup of coffee, and a few Tic Tacs, but only for a few years. After the big 3-0, muscle tone, immunity, and looks go to hell fast without a balanced diet and regular exercise. So start a healthy regime in your early 20s.
6. The slogan “The MFA is the new MBA” is the new BS. I am shocked that a guy as smart and decent as Dan Pink would coin such a misguided phrase. (It is the new "follow your bliss" for the new millennium.) The MFA permits you to stand in line for largely nonexistent tenure-track teaching jobs and to wait tables at trendy restaurants. There are circumstances that warrant the investment of time and effort in a graduate fine arts education, but proceed with great caution. Caveat emptor — let the buyer beware!
7. Pay yourself first. Uncle Sam has finally done something that actually helps creative people of all ages and incomes. It is the IRA (individual retirement account, and various other tax-deferred saving schemes). It will literally keep you out of poverty in your later years. Check out the three books on personal finance on my suggested reading list at the bottom of this column or contact any large mutual fund company. Basically, the program is a snap — just take the first dime of every dollar you earn and save it. If you start in your 20s, you will develop a humongous nest egg by the time you are in your 60s!
8. Own the roof over your head. I personally know at least six artists with real estate holdings of well over $1 million with next to no mortgages in Maine, Philly, and New York City. They do not have MBAs or any particular gift for financial speculation. They simply bought homes and studios in rundown but interesting cities in the early 1970s and made them beautiful with their sweat equity. None of us mere mortals knows the future of the housing market, but you will always need a place to live and work. If you can swing it, buy and rehabilitate a house or loft in an emerging neighborhood in a creative city that smart, young people (like yourself) would favor. The key point is to hold it for decades without trying to “flip it” for a fast buck. Time is on your side!
9. Big success happens in big cities, but saner and more community-oriented creative lives are cultivated in smaller metro regions. If you want to hit it big in almost any creative endeavor, you must move to New York City or Los Angeles and join the Darwinian fight of the fittest and luckiest. It is just how the creative marketplace is structured; there is no getting around it. But if you are into friends, family, neighborhood, and letting your creative gifts unfold in a more relaxed way, a smaller and more laid-back metro area fits the bill. These regional hotspots have a lot going for them, and I suspect they will really blossom creatively over the next 20 years.
10. If you want to be truly productive and fulfilled, find and unite with your soul mate. This is easier said than done, although two people can live more cheaply and more efficiently together than as two one-person households. Also, the emotional and financial wreckage associated with divorce severely saps the creative life for those of us who are not world-class dramatists. If one is not really the marrying kind — too independent and professionally focused — then be the “fascinating” aunt, uncle, or godparent. There are lots of ways under the sun to creatively express and receive love. The crucial thing is to truly connect with loved ones and make ties that bind. That is what any life, including the creative one, is ultimately about.
11. I saved the most important “commandment” for last: GET A MENTOR. This indispensable and influential person will professionally groom you and help open doors for you. Every creative field has its hidden signals, rules, and power brokers. Without a trusted guide, a young creative person is essentially lost and can only move forward by trial and error (mostly the latter). Most long-term creative careers have a “defining moment” that happens between the ages of 20 and 27. Do yourself a favor and read the mentor section in The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch.

Here are some Amazon.com links to books that can help you craft a sustainable creative career. Good luck!

The three most important books on the emerging creative economy:

The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas by John Howkins

A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel Pink

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida

Three classic books on career strategies:

The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch

Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design by Laurence Boldt

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2007: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Bolles

My three favorite books on personal finance and investing:

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William Bernstein

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition by Burton Malkiel

The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns

My favorite book on coping with stress:

Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Have you ever attended a concert of earsplitting, atonal, avant-garde music, strolled into a museum gallery filled with deeply disturbing surreal paintings or inadvertently stumbled across a gruesome surgical operation while surfing cable channels?

You might have been genuinely shocked by the subject matter, but at the same time strongly attracted to it.

That was what I felt as I wended my way through “What is Your Dangerous Idea? Today’s Leading Thinkers on the UNTHINKABLE.”

Richard Dawkins (a world-class biologist at Cambridge University and famously unrepentant and public atheist) and Steven Pinker (MIT/Harvard psychology professor and academic provocateur) asked more than 100 of the most distinguished English-speaking scientists (and a few other intellectual heavy hitters) to briefly describe their most dangerous ideas.

Please keep in mind that a “dangerous idea” need not be absolutely true or conventionally moral. It must simply make things go topsy-turvy. It both disrupts the status quo and spurs major innovations.

Dawkins says, “Dangerous ideas are what has driven humanity onward, usually to the consternation of the majority of any particular age who thrive on familiarity and fear change. Yesterday’s dangerous idea is today’s orthodoxy and tomorrow’s cliché.”

Dangerous ideas from the past include evolution, labor unions and child labor laws, the right to vote, the automobile, the telephone, the Human Genome Project and e-mail.

Most of the responses in the book span one to two pages. They were written in a dry, cold, perfunctory style without being overblown or patronizing to laypeople.

One of the more plausible propositions was written by Dr. Simon Baron Cohen, a distinguished Cambridge University professor of developmental psychopathology. He is the real-life uncle of Sacha Baron Cohen (aka “Borat”).

In a nutshell, the elder Baron Cohen’s dangerous idea is that masculine leadership styles lack human empathy and lead to organizational disconnect and dysfunction. Conversely, a leader with a feminine mindset can really “feel your pain” and is often willing to do something about it. An obvious implication of this dangerous idea is that planet Earth might be better off if Dr. Debbie were running things instead of GI Joe.

In the name of political correctness and all-around mental health, I will not rehash some of more challenging utterances from this provocative anthology. For the intellectually intrepid, see pages 1, 13, 27, 50, 65 and the last paragraph on page 300.

It has been said that we all live in a world where everything is possible and nothing is certain. It behooves members of the creative class with the stomach for unsettling and unpalatable thoughts to try to put the unthinkable into a human context.

We must help to distinguish the innovative and life-affirming ideas from the merely dangerous ones that just flatter the egos of a few geniuses and diminish the many.

Trying to ethically evaluate the march of scientific and technological progress is a dangerous idea in itself. But it beats denial, unproductive worrying or the hypnotic effect of “reality TV.”

Check out this book on Amazon.com.