The post below on embarrassment mostly covered this one. Except it gets more so when your first one is in something esoteric, decorative, fantastical and/or "not cool" (I'll be saying more about coolness).

It would have been so much easier if I'd come here to Prague and said I was starting another corporate consultancy. I could have said that we were specialising in emerging markets and change management. No-one would have batted an eyelid. But instead... "Tarot?" Even someone I like back in the UK couldn't say it without a small snigger.

But then he didn't know - because I'd never found it relevant to tell him - that I spent about a year obsessed with ouija boards as a small girl. "Don't break the glass, will you dear," was my mother's remark on this constant need to commune with the spirits via an upturned tumbler and an alphabet written on small scraps of paper. (It seems that you'll inadvertently find out quite a lot about my bizarre upbringing by the time we get through all these points.) Or that I then went on to study traditional yoga in an ashram in Belfast between the ages of thirteen and fifteen - ? - Yes, really, there was such a thing, started by an idealistic Austrian man who was my first yoga teacher. While others at school were working on Latin, Geography, Maths and the usual stuff, I was also taking classes - once they decided I was serious and needed some real training - in levitation and traditional Hindu spell-casting. Of which more sometime. So all in all I took to tarot, all those years later, a bit like a duck to water. Actually more like a duck that had spent years in dry dock that suddenly saw the opportunity of paddling in a lake again.

But my old friends and colleagues in the UK - such as are left - mostly find it laughable. While I suppose deep down I find the idea of them still giving earnest advice on "brand differentiation" or "leveraging your brand assets" pretty hysterical too. Let's just say we agree to differ about what's humorous.

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Do what you've always been interested in. Because only a genuine passion will sustain you during those 80-hour weeks that are going to be necessary when you start a business. Follow your true long-term interests however odd or absurd they may seem to anyone else.

I've been on the brink of starting a blog like this for quite some time. But for the last four/five years I've written a book a year - nothing very enormous, but enough to make me put all my writing focus elsewhere.

This year is different though. Not just because I don't have any writing deadline looming but also because we seem to be right on the brink of some huge changes in the 'global economy" (more of that concept at some point). So all in all it seems a good time to discuss what I know about setting up a creative business that works - in terms of giving satisfaction, excitement and security and income to those who run it.

I am not a consultant, although for some years I actually did make my living from consultancy. This blog isn't intended as a "front" for a consultancy or a coaching business - our studio produces imagery which we put on a variety of our own products (mainly paper and textiles so far) and I have no time or inclination to do anything else - or to work for clients. It's more a way of me collecting my own thoughts about what I've learned, and maybe also a way of articulating my strong belief that you have to live your life now, without putting it on hold.

Many of the opinions I'll voice will be wildly irresponsible in some ways, and won't by any means work for everyone. But if you're also on the brink - just about to ditch the "day job" or to take a risk in your work or just to make a first step - then some bits of what I have to say may resonate.