The Advice Was Right, I Read It Wrong

A reflection on creative detours, misunderstood advice, and finding alignment beyond the American dream.

I’m writing this for creatives who did everything they were told to get life to make sense and still ended up feeling misplaced. For those who chose the safe option, the transferable skill, the respectable lane, and quietly wondered why it still felt wrong. This isn’t advice, and it isn’t a success story. It’s a reflection on misread wisdom, long detours, and what it looks like to finally listen to what’s been asking for your attention all along.

A life without music is no life at all. That sentiment has carried a profound sense of purpose for me ever since hearing my high school band director, Mr. Howe, say that to a music history class he taught as an elective that I was a student assistant for as a senior. A few months later, I would attempt to follow in his footsteps and become a music education major to ensure my life’s purpose involved music.

Another teacher of mine, Mrs. Terhune, my art teacher across multiple grade levels spanning elementary school through high school, told me on more than one occasion that I was going to be one of the richest people she’s had as a student. As someone who took things incredibly literally, I always thought I would find a path that made that sentiment come true in a financial sense. It wasn’t until the last eight months, give or take, that I can say I fully understand what she meant by being rich.

Ultimately, I opted to change majors in college from music education to something more adaptable. Something that I could apply to anything, so I chose to study psychology and land a career in something safe. Fast-forwarding through a career in property management, retail banking, and investment finance industries, I found myself trying to figure out where I went wrong. What am I missing in the world of jobs that I can’t seem to get my footing? Why do I feel like the elephant in the room of these white-collar, American-dream-type career paths?

I know I’m not alone in that feeling. Having a sense that everyone else received a handbook you somehow missed. That the rooms you worked so hard to earn entry into never quite felt like places you were meant to stay. It’s disorienting to be competent, reliable, and outwardly successful while feeling internally misplaced. Especially when you’re told, explicitly or implicitly, that stability should be enough to quiet the rest.

It took a span of a few years to put all the pieces together into a road map, but I realized what I was missing. I was taking the wrong sentiments at face value and following others in the wrong direction. It wasn’t until I began to surround myself with creatives that the detours in my attempts at having a work-life balance started to feel like the right way forward. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to follow what were the right things to follow. Find the safe degree to get a stable and consistent job to check all the boxes that come with the package of the American dream. But that was never my dream. The late comedian, Mitch Hedberg once said, “I am sick of following my dreams. I’d rather find out where they are going and hook up with them later.” If I asked my dreams where they were headed, they would have said a place where I can create to support others, listen with the ability to amplify a story, perform for the sake of performing, not perform for an attempt to fit in.

I’ve worked so hard to make it this far, and it feels slightly like I am just starting. Which, in a sense, I am. I am starting a new chapter in my life where I intend to work in spaces where I can show up as my whole being. To live in spaces where my passions and advocacy efforts are understood and the skills I actually enjoy using are seen as assets, not distractions.

This week I am grateful to say I start work in the nonprofit space. The art space. The creative space. The music space. For my home. The city I have lived in for my whole life. Eight months ago, I had a vision to become a working creative professional in the arts or music industry doing marketing, branding, or graphic design work. To help tell the story of an organization that aligns with what I have always been drawn to but afraid to embrace for fear of rejection. I’ve found the start of my next chapter in the form of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra.

This is far from being the finish line. It feels more like learning to listen to my intuition and trust those who mentored me saw something I hadn’t grown into yet.  To understand that the wisdom offered to us early on was never asking us to abandon ourselves for stability, or creativity for safety, but to pay attention to what kept resurfacing. If you’re somewhere in the middle of that process, still unsure where you fit, I don’t have answers. Only the reassurance that feeling misplaced is sometimes the clearest signal that something meaningful is trying to be heard.