Etsy’s Quit Your Day Job: Paris Letters

DreamsLife Design

Feb 19

Aaaaand I've arrived.

Back in the ol' advertising agency, I would read this blog on Etsy called Quit Your Day Job. It was about people who successfully quit their day job and now have their own businesses on Etsy.

I wanted to be these people.

And now I am! I can't hardly believe it. ME!

Etsy has featured ME on their Quit Your Day Job blog.

Dreams come true. Take THAT nay sayers. Hi-ya! I karate chop you.

My dream came true when I was able to save up enough to quit my job. Then another dream came true when I moved to Paris. Yet another came true when I found my true art with my Paris Letters. And yet another dream came true when I found the lovely Christophe, who is now my fiancé (I still can't say the word fiancé without giggling it out like an English man with an overbite.).

But also, a dream came true when I WAS FEATURED ON ETSY... In the BEST section EVER:

Quit Your Day Job!!!!

Because I did it. I rolled the dice. After saving and scrimping and selling, I quit my day job and it worked out. I didn't end up starving or homeless. I didn't couch surf (much). I didn't die.

Instead, I found the love of my life at a café in Paris. And if we can ever get our paperwork done (the French!), we're getting hitched. And I got a book deal to write the story. And it happened with help from a kick ass literary agent and a little nudging from a book whisperer.

I don't mean to go on about myself, but c'mon...

It was a risk to quit a good gig in a recession to see if a better life would just... work itself out. And it did. It did! Self pinching self.

So if someone out there in Office Town is reading my story on Quit Your Day Job, know that I once sat there, too, scouring the Internet for hope. May you be inspired to do something to move yourself in the direction of their dreams.

There is always something that can be done.

"But for a long time it was enough just to be back in our part of Paris and away from the track and to bet on our own life and work."-Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Bet on your own life.

What could happen?

Janice MacLeod

Janice MacLeod is a course creator who helps people write books and create online businesses out of their art. She is a New York Times best seller, and her book Paris Letters, is a memoir about how she became an artist in Paris selling illustrated letters. She has a vibrant Etsy shop and was one of the pioneering entrepreneurs featured on Etsy's Quit Your Day Job newsletter. She has been featured in Business Insider, Forbes, Canadian Living, Psychologies Today, Elle, Huff Post, and CBC.

https://janicemacleod.com/