A few days ago, a friend of mine wrote to ask some career advice. He’s a creative guy, damn good writer, says he loves photography too. His question: “I am wondering which careers there are that can satisfy my creative drive.”

It’s not an easy question to answer, but it’s one that lots of us have asked at one time or another.

The best response I have is that the question is a false start. Careers are not something you find waiting for you downtown or across the ocean or in a cave like some sort of holy grail. Careers are something you make. You make them with decisions about how you spend your time and effort: which jobs to take (and how long to keep them), what you choose learn about, what kind of community you participate in, what activities you pursue when not working, and so on. All of these are career decisions.

But really my friend was probably asking if I could think of a specific type of job that would fit his interests and talents. (Never confuse career and job, btw.) This is a legitimate, answerable question, and unfortunately, my answer today is no. But you can make a whole career in your free time, and that’s a good start.

And it’s worth saying that there may be times when you won’t find a job that supports your career at all. It’ll be up to you to support it, and you may even need to devote all of your time to it, leaving no time to do paying work. In those cases, you either need to rethink your career, or you have to pay yourself out of whatever savings you’ve got. It’s scary, I know. But hiring yourself is sometimes the only way to do the work that you think needs to be done. Its value (or worthlessness) will be proven in the practice, and that proof will turn it into a livelihood (or a hobby). Either way, you’ll have taken a big step forward in making your career.