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I will pay you an ample monthly salary to do any job you please. Think hard.
What will you choose?
Some of you will have happily answered that you’re already doing the job you please.
Others will have chosen that thing they do when there are extra hours in the day.
Still others may have chosen something completely outside their current orbit.
But let’s take a step back.
Imagine you’re someone who adores creating journals. Every week, you put aside a few hours to stitch and paste together a beautiful journal for one of your friends, or even for yourself. One day, one of your grateful journal-owning friends comes up with a brilliant business plan for you and your journals. Fast forward ten months, and you have a website that’s raking in more orders than you can keep up with.
Literally.
You were elated a few months ago when you could give up your day job to make journals full time. But then you realized that a huge chunk of your time is spent marketing, accounting, e-mailing… not making journals, in other words. When you do finally sit down to make those journals, a strange feeling settles in the base of your chest. You can’t quite put a finger on it, but something’s definitely bothering you. Why would you feel so crappy when you’re doing what you love?
How many journals do I have to make today? Who do I have to make them for?
All these shoulds, have to’s, and gotta’s start running through your head. And suddenly, it’s obvious. That thing you love doing has become that thing you have to do.
I believe that the question of whether or not to combine one’s passion with one’s income is truly personal. Though it often seems like it would be insane to turn down the chance to turn your passion into a successful career, I’ve spoken to a number of people who’ve been there and been disillusioned.
Some writers thrive on 8-hour writing workdays, while others become famous writers by writing in the wee hours of the morning before their jobs in supermarket stock rooms.
It can be liberating and glorious to find a way to make money doing what you love, but it also brings in a lot of baggage. Baggage like obligations and ROI and finances. It can also mean compromising your pure passion to make it more marketable. In reality, many people who try to combine passion and career end up shooting too broadly — the freelance writer who loves writing, but then realizes it’s actually just writing poetry that he loves. Not writing ad copy, or white papers. But he’s making a living writing, so isn’t he doing what he loves?
The questions we have on our table today are:
Would you want to combine your passion with your career?
Or would you rather keep that passion safe from the burdens of business?
What keeps that thing you love doing from becoming that thing you have to do?
Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!
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Comments
03.11.09
If I knew what my passion was (still trying to put my finger on it) I would for sure want to make a career of it. 40+ hours a week is a lot of time to devote to something other than what you love. Why waste it on something else?
03.11.09
Jason Kottke had a great post on this a few days ago from an Guardian article on Writers. To hi-jack the money quote:
"I wouldn't be the first writer to point out that doing something so deeply personal does become less jolly when you have to keep on at it, day after cash-generating day. To use a not ridiculous analogy: Sex = nice thing. Sex For Cash = probably less fun, perhaps morally uncomfy and psychologically unwise. Sitting alone in a room for hours while essentially talking in your head about people you made up earlier and then writing it down for no one you know does have many aspects which are not inherently fulfilling."
So, uh, chew on that, I guess ...
03.13.09
@ ncsuz - You bring up a good point -- many people are still figuring out their passion... such an abstract thing to pinpoint! It's true that it seems silly to spend that much time on something else... but then again, if turning your passion into a job makes it less enjoyable, that's something to consider.
@ Zack - That's quite the analogy... certainly makes the point! Thanks for sending the link.
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