From ivory tower to center stage: how I found the audacity to let my inner artist shine

For this third edition of Work Exits & Post-Mortems, I interviewed my friend and singer-songwriter, Cesar Francia, now known as Francia. When I met Francia, he was an attorney at a prestigious law firm in New York City. Today, he’s a singer-songwriter, talk show host, actor-in-training and model. This is the story of how he rediscovered his inner child and inner artist, and underwent such a significant transformation. It’s also the story of what he’s lost along the way, and how career paths are not necessarily linear or either/or.

As usual, I take the gems from our interview and ghost-write a career post-mortem in first person. I hope that, like me, you find this one inspiring, thought-provoking and even a little bit liberating.

tl;dr

I’m an Afro-Venezuelan singer-songwriter, dancer, content creator,and more. I went from trying to belong and prove my worthiness in a career in corporate law in New York City, to embracing and celebrating every facet of my identity with every ounce of my being. Here’s the story of how.

How I became a lawyer

I had the grades and people in my life that I looked up to and respected told me I could and should. First, a neighbor growing up really befriended me in an intergenerational way, she started to teach me Italian, and I ended up attending a Italian-Spanish bilingual school that I loved thanks to her. It was then I started coming to an awareness that I’m kind of smart, I can learn things and then I did well in school.?

The second person was Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I worked for her as her Aide for two terms at the U.S. Supreme Court and she asked me if I had ever thought about going to law school. So thanks to her and through that job, I decided to go to law school. She really propelled me forward.

Why I became a corporate lawyer

This one is harder and more multi-faceted. The “why” I told myself at the time was that I like to purposely put myself in situations that expand me and help me grow. I also felt a sense of financial obligation to my family because we didn’t grow up with much. I also felt that it was part of my story that I was the one who had ‘made it’ and it was my goal and in my power to help my family, so here I had an opportunity to do it. I felt the weight of it, and felt I had to do it.

Looking back, after having gone through a ton of therapy, I can see that I was also motivated by a feeling of unworthiness. I thought that the more accolades I had to show the more I was worthy of more respect, more love, more appreciation.

I also think that I buried myself in my work as a way of escaping grief, unhealed trauma, and being overwhelmed by the responsibility of bringing twelve members of my family from Venezuela to live with me in the U.S. I hadn’t yet found therapy or meditation or more skilful ways to process it, so work was my blunt instrument. I doubled down on? work because I must have been finding some validation there.

What was it actually like for me being a lawyer

There was a lot to love about it. I loved the people I worked with. I loved the projects I was working on. I loved the pay. The glamour, the meals, the travel, the business class, all that good stuff.?

As a second year, I was also put in front of a lot of clients and got to travel with partners to do business development. They noticed that I was really good in the business development side and it doesn't hurt to have a black queer Latino front and center because it shows your firm is diverse and it doesn't hurt that he's eloquent and people like him. So they shone the spotlight. And I went along for the ride. Because I wanted to experience it.?

But inside I was hurting. I battled with imposter syndrome the entire time - being in that environment alters your sense of worthiness and can be a trigger.

I was just barely surviving. And outside of work, I had a lot of stressors too. I had 12 members of my family living with me in my house I bought. It was a 3-unit building with commercial space. We lived on top of each other in one unit, I was running an Airbnb out of the second floor, and we were running our own pizza joint across the street and because my family didn’t speak English, I was taking pizza orders in English at work.

Meanwhile, I’m working crazy hours. And then I was trying to live an enjoyable life now that I finally could afford to eat out.

So I was sleeping four hours a day. I was over drinking, over eating, over working, over indexing on everything that's not good or healthy.?

There was just so much pressure on you from so many directions. All happening at the same time.

And I masked it all with a big smile. I just acted as if everything's great. Like I'm not hurting in any way. Like let's just eat and have a good time. Do you want a shot? Because I also felt guilty about making so much money. So I bought everybody shots.

That lasted close to seven years. Despite all that, I lasted more? years in big corporate law in New York than I ever thought possible. You think that’s gritty? Guess grit is my biggest asset in life. I do what I need to do. And I push myself. And I get through it. In a way, grit is my salvation.

How I exited law

I was stretched so thin and over indexing on things that were not good for me. It came to a point where my body couldn't take it anymore. There was wear and tear.

And I started to care less about keeping up. I started to care less about proving that I was worthy of being there. Eventually I realized that no matter how qualified I was or how many languages I spoke, I worked with top talent, alums from the best law schools, in a hyper-competitive environment and though that took a toll on my intellectual self-confidence, I learned to be proud of what I brought to the table: work ethic, good disposition, and commitment to getting it right.

I also realized there are many other people there who are also playing the game who are not necessarily smarter than me but they have a way of presenting their work in a way that makes their work look better or in a way that makes them more relatable.

Or of triggering in a partner (most of whom are white) this thought of “you remind me of who I was when I was younger” because that partner sees themselves reflected in a white associate. If you're a white partner with a privileged upbringing, well, you're never going to have that relationship with me - no matter how good my work is.?

And that’s probably why I felt the need to go to a meditation retreat over the holidays in my last year. Friends of mine had mentioned this one retreat for years. I finally went. I went from never having meditated before to meditating 10 hours a day for 10 days straight.

I hadn’t spoken to my father in 13 years. The retreat was so transformational that I literally sent him a text message the day I came out.

So as I’m re-integrating back into my normal life, I knew law was not the environment I wanted. I told myself I’d work and save for a few more months, but then I was unfairly yelled at by a partner. And I just realized: I need to get out. For my own self-esteem, I cannot allow myself to exist in this environment. It was self-preservation.

I look back and on some level, I always knew law might not have been for me - even coming in as a summer associate, I had my doubts. It took me seven years of putting up with a lot of pressure and a spiritual awakening to listen and act on it.

What (and who) I rediscovered

Pablo Picasso famously said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

As a child, I was a dancer through and through. I would take over the dance floors and just do my own thing - I would dance with other kids, I would dance with the grandmas, all kinds of music, all kinds of genres. It was very clear that if that had been cultivated, I might have become a child star but my dad refused to. And that sort of died a little bit. And I also came into awareness of my homosexuality and my queerness and being super free exposed me. So I became a little bit more macho-presenting.

Through my meditation practice, I was able to reconnect with my inner child. My inner child is now literally thriving.

When I have a continuous meditation practice, my creativity blossoms, I can hear melodies and arrangements and instruments. And I can see fashion ideas with designs. The more connected I am to my spirit, the more creative I become.

Now there’s an inevitability to it. It takes over me and I can’t control it. It’s like I become the creative hulk - in a good way. I'm just letting it take over and I'm just letting it show in every way, through every medium possible.

What was it actually like for me becoming an artist

At first, I was deeply concerned about being ridiculed and being seen as an attention whore. But art came to me through a spiritual process and it became such an intimate thing where nothing else matters. And my healing stems from creating it.?

It has been a great way of dealing with any ghosts that I had around.

I chose to not be worried about being upset if it didn’t work out. I knew that the real winning was in giving myself the chance and having the resolution to see it through - that's the real win. Well, the daring, you know, and like if it didn't work out, that’s not in my control.?

I don't control airways, I don't control the billboard charts, I don't control any of that. But I can control how cool my video is going to look. I can control what outfit I’m going to wear and? how confident I'm going to be when I show up.

I’m also a critic of my own art but not in a harmful way. I’ve had to ask myself: Do you think you have what it takes? Will the entertainment you create be worth people's time and money? You know it’s a vital question, and before, I didn't want to ask that question of anybody because I was afraid of what their answer was going to be because I didn't know it for myself.?

But after almost three years, I’ve come to realize there is value in what I’m doing, not only spiritually, which is already enough, but there is commercial value too.

How I am re-entering law

Amazingly, I’m sharing this story about my exit from law, as I’m re-entering the law.?

I was performing at a child’s birthday party, and I met one of the parents who happened to have a? lawyer friend that was also into meditation. So a few minutes later r, I’m introduced to the lawyer-meditator and we had? lunch the following week. I show up and it’s a full-blown law firm and in that moment, I had to check-in with myself. Am I ready for this type of environment again? I realized I’d done the work and I was ready to reintegrate myself.

I am honoring my boundaries and my need to have time for my art, so I am working? remotely and part time. I am thankful to integrate all aspects of my identity and allow myself to be a lawyer meditative artist.?

Lessons learned

1. Sometimes the very reason you’re drawn to a job might be the reason you leave it.

The very reason you’re good at it might be the reason it’s not healthy for you to do it full-time.

And just because you’re qualified to get a hard-to-get job doesn’t mean you’ll thrive on the job or that it’s healthy for you - there’s can I do it, will I thrive, and is it good for me? The answers won’t necessarily align.

2. The endowment effect is at work with a career too.

We grow more attached to the things that are ours or that we ourselves have put work into. We value what we’ve spent time pouring time and energy into. Know this when asking yourself if you love the career you have now or if you will love one you haven't yet started.

3. Capacity is a funny thing. For people who love to grow and expand, so too does their capacity. You learn what your limits are. But if expansion is the only imperative, you eventually reach a breaking point.

There needs to be something more filling your well besides the question ‘can I do this?’

4. Careers are not linear or mutually exclusive.

You can come back to a career you thought you left behind. You can hold space for multiple professional identities and let them co-exist - even if they’re strange bedfellows like lawyer and singer-songwriter.

Francia: My inner child is making peace with my adult side and now they're like intermingling. Before they were judging each other. When I was a lawyer, I judged the artist in me. And when I was an artist, I judged the former lawyer in me. How could he let himself get so fat, so unhealthy? But I had to remind myself that it was on that one salary that I was able to bring my entire family from a different country and build my own credit from scratch and buy a multi-family property. Now they’ve called truce and they're coexisting and integrated.

5. In (re)discovering your creativity and pursuing the arts, you may eclipse others who want to do the same and this may create resentment. But there’s little you can do about that.

Francia: I have not received the level of support or encouragement from my family that I deserve. I think it’s triggered them that in just 2.5 years, even though I didn’t study the arts, I have a viable career in the arts, while they have not dared to work for their dreams. I’m shining and I gotta keep on shining. I’m not purposefully holding up a mirror to blind you with my light. You can choose to see it as an invitation for you to join me. But I know they’re not there and everybody has their own journey.

Today

Today, Francia is a singer-songwriter, actor, talk show host and part-time lawyer, shining more brightly than ever.

Learn more about his work at: https://thefrancia.com.