13 Steps To Actually Make Your Career Dream A Reality

"I have always been drawing, as all kids tend to do, but never really stopped," Sokov told BuzzFeed Life. "When I was around 13 I discovered digital painting and have been digitally painting in my free time ever since."

While he was in his marketing job, Sokov was trying to paint on the side but it just wasn’t enough.

“I would sell an adorable amount of prints to people on Reddit of my Louis C.K. painting, and would do sadly paid commissions for friends. Unfortunately, by the time I got home from work, made food, ate it, washed the dishes it was usually 9:45 to 10 p.m., which left me with an hour of painting at home a day.”

"I spent two years working in marketing, waiting for the moment when the amount of money I was getting would somehow offset the reality of not doing what I love. That moment never came, of course, because you can't get enough of what you don't really want."

"I have always wanted to be an artist but I fell for several mainstream narratives: that artists cannot make money, a job should not be enjoyable, and that having security/money will make me happy."

"Last year, with more fear and trepidation than I care to admit I put in a two-month notice (right before I was supposed to get a raise), and moved near San Diego to attend Watts Atelier, where I learned traditional oil painting and drawing."

"As a young person you have not only crazy amounts of energy (I haven't taken a day off in over three months, and am still alive; this probably isn't doable when I'm 50) but also a really high risk tolerance because not a lot depends on you. "

"I took 16 different classes a week, which amounted to 48 hours a week of class, plus work at home if we could manage it. [At first] everything I made looked like a child made it."

"All I really did was do art, come home, spend time with a girl I met if I could manage it, sleep a little bit on the floor on a way expired mattress (my spinal column became crooked as a result of that terrible mattress, haha, I had to get it realigned when I got back to Montreal after), and go back to class the next day. No days off."

"Being upset that your first oil paintings aren't turning out is almost rude in a way, because it is saying that you don't think you need to put in the work to get your teacher's results."

When he got the email about the Time portrait, Sokov was still at the Atelier so he had to complete the portrait in addition to his course load.

“I think at one point I hallucinated from being too tired. It took 40 to 45 hours or so, and most of my dreams during that period were about painting Putin's pores. I finished it a day early, sent it in, and they loved it. Somehow I went from painting Reddit's dogs to a Time Person of the Year.”

In any freelance career, work (which also means money) can come in waves.

"You can no longer expect a steady stream," Sokov said. "It is very feast or famine. Right now is amazing, two months from now may be crickets."

When Sokov first started oil painting in school, he wasn't any good.

"I remember looking at what I made and thinking, Holy shit, I quit my job to produce this? We went home that day and were too sad to attend the next class. And that is how I learned the most important skill at the Atelier: how to make terrible work and be OK with it, because you don't deserve to make good stuff yet."

"My entire brain is rewired completely and I am an entirely new person. I have developed understandings that would probably have eluded me my whole life if it wasn't for this. Life now feels like an adventure with a mission, and not the stale boring routine it was before. I determine the outcomes in my life now, and that is terribly exciting."