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The Shaping in Action series is where we get to know inspiring women who are pioneering and shaping what's to come. 

Financial analyst by day, underground rocker by night. For a while, it seemed as if Xenia Shin was living the dream. The only problem was that it wasn't her dream.

Now that she's focusing exclusively on music -- and happier in every possible way -- Xenia feels the secrets of success have been unveiled to her: It's all about balance and the importance of knowing yourself.

Without the worries and drudgery of her oppressive day job, Xenia has been able to devote her time to fronting her band, Laco$te, an experimental blend of K-pop (Korean pop) hooks and post-apocalyptic noise (the band's Facebook page describes its music as "sextronic electrogator"). That commitment is already paying off, as Laco$te recently released an EP ("The Paradox of Time") on a Los Angeles label and recorded an award-winning video. But of all the lessons she's learned in the last half-year, perhaps the most important -- and the most broadly applicable to the overeducated quarter-lifers looking for direction in a bad economy -- concerns trying to do too much: "Just because you can be good at a lot of things," Xenia counsels, "it doesn't mean you should do them all."

Xenia knows from experience. Though she ended up as an analyst in a major consulting firm, she actually had no background in finance. After she earned her M.F.A. in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Xenia returned to her native Los Angeles to plot her next move. She wrote about experimental art for UCLA, interned as a script reader in a production office and did temp work at a large financial firm.

Of all the career choices she could have imagined, it was the latter that seemed least likely. But when the financial firm offered her a position in 2007, she took it. Her lack of interest in finance was mitigated by how nice it was to have health insurance, and the extra money whispered temptations of new instruments, equipment and tours.

So the artsy, avant-garde-leaning frontwoman conformed, abiding grueling 70-hour weeks at her day job and spending every free moment on Laco$te. She stretched herself tissue-paper thin, using her vacation days to go on tour, closing sets at 2 a.m. and showing up at work six hours later. She toiled away like this for four overcaffeinated years, until January, when she was suddenly laid off.

Though losing your job can be traumatic, in this instance it was liberating. Six months later, Xenia is happier, healthier and more engaged with her creativity. "I keep asking myself why I didn't quit my job," she says now. "You have to learn to articulate your worst-case scenario. If you don't, you'll be unconsciously avoiding these invisible obstacles. If I had asked myself what I really feared, I could've found a way to deal with it."

When Xenia started a self-analyzing interrogation, one of the first things she realized was that she needed to shed the external idea of "success." In finance, success is quantitatively defined, while success to her and other artists means meeting an inner-aesthetic criterion. "I definitely feel like I'm making what I want to hear," she says of her music, "and, to me, that's achieving what I want to do." She's quick to note that the DIY music scene is extremely supportive and can help keep afloat those whose passions don't involve the accumulation of wealth. She's been forced to get more creative financially, but she doesn't starve. "If you're going into the arts," she says, "learn to cook."

"Before, I had a short-term vision, day to day," she says. "Maybe it should've been more scary." It seems counterintuitive to refer to a salaried job as short-term and struggling artist as long, but it was only through losing stability that her optimism and direction have flourished. Buoyed by her freedom, she's working with a producer and planning her next album, and wants to tour Europe. "I understand the pressures of convention," says Xenia. "But it's worth it, resisting." For her, the independence is worth the uncertainty, and she wears the effortless charisma of someone who's chosen her own path. "The unknown," says Xenia, "isn't so much about the future as it is about yourself."

Photo credit: Joshua White