piece by Nathan Sawaya, photo credit: Design Milk
It Won’t Kill Your Passion Project
I’ve been working at a regular 9 to 5 type job for the past 6 years and change. It’s not a glamorous job. It’s not a glamorous industry. In fact, it’s a very old business, where being considered a startup is a severe disadvantage.
I also have this side gig — which I’ve been working on for the past year or so, which is writing online. I write here on Medium, I have a weekly newsletter (sign up for it, won’t you?), and I also write copy for clients. That last piece is the only thing that pays. The other two are basically ways to create a funnel for that paying work, and to just write out the myriad thoughts that pop into my head — to flesh them out, lest they rattle around and distract me from actually living my life.
The Day Job
The work I do at my day job is not at all related to what you see me do online, and what I do for my clients. The only things I write at that job are emails, reports on projects, or powerpoint presentations of business conditions to current customers. It’s not my dream job; it doesn’t give me the thrill of expressing my true passion and creativity, and no one is asking me to give talks or be on podcasts.
But this regular job — the kind that many millennials who overuse the word “passion” would scoff at — does something for me that I would never give up. It provides me a reliable foundation that allows me to do what you see me doing here. It allows me to do that and to not compromise this in a mad-dash effort to market and monetize it. Also — and this is not be overlooked — it allows me a buffet of experiences in business to help me write better, interact with clients better, and conduct business better.
The “All In” Argument
Everyone reading this can surely think of a very recent article where the writer gives the advice that you should quit your day job to go “all in” on your passion — which has been your side hustle. The argument usually goes something like this: once you go all in on your passion project, and abandon your safety net of a day job, you’ll be forced to make it work — forced to find a way to make it profitable. When you risk it all, you stand to succeed in a bigger way, because you have to.
I get that argument. Part of it sounds compelling. Having a safe job to fall back on can be a device that keeps you from fully committing to your side project, something that saps your energy and time that could be going to the thing you love. It could be what keeps you from really doing what your heart really wants to do.
But that scenario is not true for everyone. In fact, I think it’s only true for a few people. What’s more, I think that if having a safety net keeps you from making your passion project work, maybe you’re not as passionate about it as you thought.
Don’t Compromise
Having a day job, for me, provides something invaluable for my passion-pursuit of writing online: it allows me to never compromise my work just to get money. I’ve thus far had 2 paying gigs writing copy. Both have paid well, been for clients that recognized the value I bring, and have matched my style. Because of that, both gigs have been immensely enjoyable, even when difficult. I haven’t had to take a questionable gig for a low fee, with a client who didn’t value my work. That’s the trifecta right there.
But here’s the thing: I wouldn’t be able to say that if I had tossed aside my day job to try to make money as a writer. Because I’m not relying on my writing as the sole means to support my family, I don’t have to compromise it.
My pace is slower, yes — it may take years before I have enough work writing to amass a decent income. But so what? Have we forgotten that good things take time? Have we forgotten that becoming really good at a craft (like writing) takes a long time, and that getting recognized as good at that craft takes even longer? Have we so deluded ourselves about growth-hacking and disrupting that we think we can brute force excellence? I haven’t.
I want to write, and I want that writing to be valued enough that I can live off of it. That can only happen when people realize the value that my writing has, and are willing to pay for it. Something like that takes time — probably a lot of time. No balls-out marketing effort can guarantee that it will happen — not while keeping intact the integrity and values of my practice.
If you find yourself disagreeing with me, you have to ask yourself: do I really have a passion for this thing I’m doing, or is that passion outweighed by a passion for money and notoriety? If you refuse to be patient in your passion project — if you refuse to work on the thing itself, and instead work on finding a way to monetize it, maybe you’re not as passionate about that thing as you thought. That’s okay, I understand the pull of money and notoriety. It’s a strong pull, and we all feel it.
At the End of the Day
My argument may give you pause, it may not. You might be young, single, ambitious, and ready to take this world by the horns. You may read my words as the words of a guy who gave up on his dream and now just does what he can to keep a day job from crushing his soul. But surely, that’s a little reductive, no? Surely an opinion like that has not been tempered by the thoughtfulness of time spent caring about what you do, and not how it makes you cash.
So, in terms of a piece of bite-sized advice that’s easily shared and tweeted, I’ll say this: your day job may be the very thing that helps you make money doing what you’re really passionate about, rather than contorting that thing into something lucrative but lackluster. Passion isn’t something that dies out because there’s no money to fuel it. That’s not the way passion works.
So keep your day job. It may be the very thing that allows you to eventually do what you love.
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