I had a semi-professional birth chart reading done a few weeks ago.
On the initial screening form for the reading, I requested information about my love life. As a perpetually single gal approaching a certain age, I thought it crucial to know where the stars stood on my likelihood of finding a man. A few hours later though, I followed up with a different request - “tell me if I'm going to be successful in my business.” I received the link to my video reading a few days later. I have a lot of Taurus in my chart… Like a lot. Apparently the universe knows the Taurus to be very hard-working, very focused on financial success and the extravagant life befitting such hard work. Several of my placements confirmed the high value I place on freedom and my ability to thrive in situations where I spend a lot of time alone. The overwhelming message was if I stayed focused and did things my way I would have success.
Best $15 I’ve spent in a long time, honestly. Gotta love a positive affirmation directly from the universe.
Talia Warren Design is a business that has been in the works for longer than I even realize but I’d been half-assing my efforts for a while now. I’ve spent over a decade working in Human Resources at some of the most prestigious companies in Los Angeles. I’ve built a knowledge base and a skillset and the ability to make good money in Human Resources and for the longest time, I was afraid to leave the comfort and safety of my career to take a chance on building the creative business I felt called to.
I was miserable in my career but didn’t know how to make a change. To start, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do creatively. I’ve always been a strong writer and for a long while I assumed my eventual career would have something to do with writing. Whenever I attempted to jump the Human Resources ship I found myself looking at creative roles that would have involved writing - Marketing roles, copywriting for online magazines. Nothing ever panned out. I made a serious attempt at jewelry making around 2015. I sank a ton of money into classes and soldering equipment and gemstones and findings. I loved making jewelry and leather handbag charms for me to wear but the process of producing multiple pieces by hand for sale seemed horrific. I made more money reselling my equipment and tools than I made on any of my jewelry sales.
Then there was my attempt at being a chef. I love to cook and my aunt, probably sensing that I was floundering in life, paid for me to attend the professional program at the New School of Cooking in Culver City. I fell in love with the process of sausage making and began sketching out a business where I delivered handmade, gourmet sausages to the tailgate crowd at USC and UCLA football games. I tested the easiest pork casings to use for my sausages. I made homemade mustards, planning in advance for the add-ons that would grow my sausage empire. My interest in the idea ran out somewhere between researching commercial rental space and figuring out the logistics of a “Hotdog Handout” on campus the Friday before a game as a marketing event.
Finding ceramics was a fluke. I’d been taking ceramics classes for years before I considered selling any of my pieces. I’m still horrible on the wheel but handbuilding is an incredible outlet, probably because I’d gone into it with no expectations. I don’t expect my pieces to be good; if you purchase any of them now, please know my expectations for my art haven’t changed. Ceramics is the first instance in my adult life that I allowed myself to be free in my creativity instead of having expectations for it.
I started making human shapes. I’m in love with the human form - many of the pieces in my personal art collection are busts or portraits or nudes. My first major piece was a horned devil head peering out over the rim of a large bowl intended for Halloweeen. Next came a series of busts - faceless but somehow still haunting in my artist's mind. Then came the full figures - a headless nude couple, little goblins with protruding stomachs, an ongoing study in perfecting more realistic feet.
Reading back these descriptions of my art I feel the need to insert here that I am a completely normal person.
I loved ceramics because it wasn’t a money making hobby - it was a fun hobby. Like the Improv class I took at UCB, or the drum class I embarrassed myself once. A fun, one off hobby that unlike some of the others just happened to stick.
I lived for several years in this state - miserable at work and in life. Unfulfilled. Knowing I was meant to be doing something creative but unable to get anything started. I questioned seriously whether I’d be able to survive 30+ more years of meaningless, mind numbing office work. I contemplated seriously living in my car as a means to cut my expenses down to nothing in order to quit my job and find freedom.
Dispersed throughout these gray years of my mid 20’s to early 30’s were obvious high points. I found a part-time job in the horse-racing industry that I love. The job doesn’t replace my full time income, but it did allow me to spend two months traveling through Europe and Asia while speeding up the last of my student loan payments. I made great friends, friends who are different to me in ways that challenge and expand me. I discovered a love of the outdoors and got in the best shape of my life birdwatching on long hikes and camping trips. And somewhere in there, through the grace of God and online therapy, I realized the parts of myself I needed to heal before I could become the person I know I’m meant to be.
It sounds cheesy because it is cheesy. It’s also true. I had to rediscover a lot of the confidence I had as a child and lost as a young adult. Before the world wore me down. Before I could fully appreciate that I was poor and black and a woman and everything encompassed in being those things. Before I learned to compare how hard I had to work to how easily other people got things handed to them. Before I had to pay bills and make decisions based on my desire to continue being able to pay bills.
Life had sucked the delusion out of me and replaced it with reality. I didn’t consent to any of this. And I know these aren’t feelings exclusive to me. I don’t think most people are fulfilled at work. I don’t think most people feel like they’re doing everything they want to do in life. I’m not even sure if most people are truly happy in life… more like existing contentedly.
But I don’t want to just exist. I want to live spectacularly.
In 2019, I finally reached the tipping point where my self confidence overcame my need for financial safety. I quit my full-time job, intent on earning less with my part-time job as supplement to whatever I’d be able to earn selling my art. I was willing to pick up another part-time job to make extra money to afford studio time if my art sales didn’t make the difference; I preemptively signed up for UberEats.
For the first time in my adult life I put action to words and took a major gamble on myself, on building my future on my terms.
Then the pandemic hit.
I still hate admitting how good a year I had in 2020. I hate admitting it because the world had literally gone to shit but for the first time in a long while, I was thriving. As a person who enjoys being home alone, the solitude of lockdowns was a welcome change of pace. I was a high income earner in my HR career which meant I was entitled to the maximum unemployment benefit for over a year after my part-time job was shut down. While millions of Americans were struggling to make ends meet closing their small businesses, possibly forever, I was experiencing a small financial surplus when I’d expected to be pinching pennies.
The pandemic was the forced reset I desperately needed. It gave me time to continue the mindset work that gave me the confidence to quit my job in the first place. It gave me the freedom to get more clear on what I was meant to be doing with my life. It was the forced at-home-ness of the pandemic that made me realize that interior styling was something that should be an integral part of my design studio in addition to creating original art. If the saying “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is accurate, interior styling will never feel like work. I grew up in an occasionally erratic environment. For a good deal of my childhood I didn’t live in spaces I felt completely safe and happy; I didn’t live in spaces where I had privacy or the ability to make my space my own. I carried that feeling into college, never truly allowing myself to get comfortable in my dorm or college apartments. By October of my freshman year of college, everyone on my floor had their dorm decor in full swing - matching accent pillows and throws discarded by unmade beds, framed Ikea posters over the desk area, that one bending floor lamp from Target everyone had. My roommate and I lived together all four years of college and didn’t decorate any of our spaces.
It wasn’t until I moved into my first apartment by myself in 2009 that I allowed myself the space to curate my home. I lived in a studio so I didn’t have much space and I had significant student loan debt so I didn’t have much money.
But I’m a creative person, and I always have been. And as it turned out, I loved styling my home. I loved creating things for my home. I loved the feeling of coming home and being impressed with my space. I was able to overcome a lot of the instability that plagued my childhood and the feeling of comparison and being less than that battered me during college. My home became a tangible source of pride. A visual, interactive representation of my skill, my creativity and my ability to overcome.
Looking back at it now, interior styling seems like such an obvious direction but it wasn’t until the solitude of the pandemic that I was able to put it all together.
I officially started Talia Warren Design in 2020. My ceramics studio was closed until 2021 so I was able to focus on building out the interior styling portion of the business. I started a YouTube channel geared toward small space styling, plant care and art. I solicited friends and friends of friends who needed inexpensive updates to their homes to serve as beta testers of my service, reviewing my client onboarding process and providing feedback to my Style Solutions guides. I also immersed myself into interior design - I subscribed to all the major décor magazines and sought out architects and designers on Instagram. I was determined to know all the elements that differentiated Transitional from Traditional style as well as the best ways to describe those differences to future clients.
I love being at home. I think everyone should have the privilege of being able to love being at home. I want to help people love their home the way I love mine. And I want to give that opportunity to people who may never considered being able to spend money investing on themselves by way of investing in their home. I love art; I love creating beauty, I always have.
I stumbled into a calling. A legitimate, ‘holy shit, this is what I’m meant to be doing with myself’ calling.
But then again…
I don’t have an art degree so who am I to make and sell art? I didn’t go to design school and I don’t own my home so who am I to offer interior styling tips? Other people on YouTube making interior design videos actually know what they’re talking about and their homes look so much nicer than mine - why would anyone watch me?
2021 was nearing its end and I hadn’t made anything near a living wage from my studio. I’d gone back to my part-time job when it reopened but I wasn’t making ends meet. I wouldn’t be able to afford to continue paying for studio time for my ceramics without more money coming in. My already infrequent YouTube upload schedule became non-existent. My pandemic mini surplus was wiped out on the purchase of a new car when my old one fittingly died on a hill in Old Pasadena.
I had not overcome the fear and doubt and insecurity that plagued most of my 20’s and 30’s. I did a great job temporarily assuaging it. At my core I was still uncertain that I’d be able to build something successful. I was still afraid of failure and being left without. I didn’t crave safety necessarily but I still didn’t have the confidence to turn it away if offered.
I also hadn’t overcome the narrative I’d been feeding myself about being lazy. Granted, I’m a little lazy sometimes - who isn’t. I’m an average amount of lazy; a perfectly normal amount of lazy that lots of other successful people are. I’m not so lazy that the idea of building my own business should seem outlandish but it felt very much outlandish. I had a successful HR career and lots of hobbies but was gauging my ability to be productive on my ability to build a business from scratch during a global pandemic and of course, was found lacking.
So I updated my HR resume and updated my status on LinkedIn and Indeed. I promised myself in 2019 that I’d never need to update my HR resume again. Within a week of passive searching I’d had several promising phone screens. I promised myself in 2019 I’d never have another HR interview. By mid-December, I had an offer to manage HR systems at a growing law firm. I’d promised myself previously that I would never work in a law firm.
It went about as well as you’d imagine and I quit before my sixth month. All the negative emotions I’d had at work pre-pandemic returned with a vengeance at that law firm. I cried daily as I tried to remind myself how lucky I was to have such a short commute. The extra time at home avoiding traffic should convert to more time after work to create art or YouTube content.
Except in reality I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted when I got home from work and the last thing I wanted to do was work more. I wasted $1,000 in studio fees despite not firing a single piece of art all year. My YouTube and social media channels lay dormant despite the wonderful people in my community who occasionally reached out to ask my opinion on a thrift find or ways to incorporate storage for a child into a small space.
Or just to say hello. To see if I was okay and to tell me that my videos had somehow been helpful.
It was the response from my community that quickly brought me back to the realizations I made in 2019. I’d allowed myself to get pulled back to the safety and security of a well paying HR job. I let doubt and reality creep in again. I was setting myself up for a ride and I knew exactly where the road would end. In burnout, sadness, jealousy, overwhelming emptiness and misery.
I’m not being dramatic. I couldn’t let that happen again. I quit the highest paying job I’ve ever had with nothing lined up. I filmed the first YouTube video I’d filmed in months. I signed up for a glass blowing class. I found a studio to fire my pieces without making me pay a monthly membership for studio space I’m never going to use because I prefer to handbuild my pieces at home.
I spent my 20’s and 30’s being knocked around by reality and resenting it when I should have been using it as fuel.
The reality is I’ve always been a creative person. I’ve always known I was meant to build something, literally, with my own hands.
The reality is I won’t be able to work a standard office job for 30+ years. This isn’t to knock on anyone with a 9-5; I worked with plenty of people who loved being in HR. I know happy accountants and people who happily project manage. That isn’t my reality.
Finding the courage to pursue art, to pursue building a business when I never saw myself as an entrepreneur didn’t require fighting against the reality of fear and doubt and hardship life heaped on me. It required me to appreciate the reality of who I am and who I was always meant to be. Who I am will beat fear, doubt and hardship everyday. I know it in my bones.
It was literally written for me in the stars.
My chart reading brushed very quickly over the topic of love and relationships. No promises one way or the other. I think the omission may have been intentional which doesn’t bode well for the future.
I’m going to let it slide since I’m at least destined for wealth.
Comments