Q & A: "Help! I Can't Make a Living Doing What I Love."

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Hi Brian

Your blog is great, and I love the concept of doing what I love.  The problem is, what I love isn’t something I could make a good living at.  My current job pays the bills, and doesn’t leave me much time for anything else.  Do you have any suggestions?

Regards, Matthew

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Hi Matthew

Suggestions?  I have a ton of them!  First of all though, I’d like to smash a couple of annoying and distracting myths that many of us buy into in today’s society.

Here are two things you’ll never hear me say:  “You have to make a living out of doing what you love”; and “Do what you love and the money will follow”.

The reason you should do what you love – the only reason – is because it makes you happy.  Just don’t assume it’ll make you any money (and I’m not saying it won’t make you any money).  You haven’t said what the thing you love doing is, so I can’t comment on your particular case, but here are some thoughts you might like to ponder:

It can be a lot of fun to not make a living at what you love.

Not everyone wants to make their job the centre of their life – or even anywhere near the centre of their life.  They work to make a living, and they use their free time to pursue their dreams.  They may be a teacher or joiner or fire-fighter by day, and a painter of fabulous masterpieces when they step outside their classroom/workshop/fire station.  There are a number of advantages to this approach.  For a start, you are beholden to no one but yourself, unless you choose to be by pursuing something that involves others.  In addition, you can work to your own timescales, not those of a boss or a corporation.  That can be a terrifically liberating experience for a person used to a day job which is regulated by the office clock.

Your job doesn’t have to be the centre of your existence, but it does have to support you – in every sense of the word.

Having a day job which pays the bills, even if it doesn’t involve your ideal activity, is a good thing.  Like the myths above, another one we sometimes buy into is that in order to realise our dreams, we have to quit everything – job, town, relationship, family, security, prospects – and ride off over the horizon to find our most cherished goals.  It might be a nice image, and it may even sometimes work – but in reality, the pursuit of dreams can be much more mundane and manageable (thank goodness!).

Use what little time you do have to do what you love – even if it’s only for minutes a day.  You say your current job doesn’t leave you “much time”.  Well, use that small amount, and consider whether you could increase it by cutting down on anything else. Are you able to cut down on television watching? Is it possible to shorten your commute to work in any way?  Can anyone else help with the chores that currently eat into your free time?  Are there more efficient ways of doing your grocery shopping?  What about eliminating unnecessary phone calls and meetings?

Life gives us many opportunities to steal back precious time, when we really look for them.  Wonderfully, what we focus on has a habit of expanding, so doing what you love consistently, even if it has to be in stolen moments at first, can have unexpectedly satisfying results.  I’ll wager that you’ll get more done than you’d have thought possible, and you’ll start finding time you didn’t think you had.

A word of caution: if your current job is making you really miserable, for whatever reason, you must get out.  If it’s making you ill; if you really can’t stand to be around the people you work with; if you have to drink yourself into a stupor each night in order to be able to face the following day; if you find you think about not much else, and the thoughts aren’t pleasant ones – forget about pursuing your dreams for now (unless they are a genuine and realistic ticket out), and start applying some emergency resuscitation to your daily life.  We spend a huge proportion of time at work, so it has to be at least acceptable to us.  You want to make sure you have enough energy and enthusiasm left over to do what you love – don’t let your job kill your dreams.

You might be able to make a living doing what you love.

People make a living doing some beautifully unusual things.  Did you know that a person could make a living as a coconut safety engineer?  Or a monkey-keeper?  Or a karaoke-singing taxi driver? A professional Lego-assembler?   Well, they can.  Don’t assume that what you love is something that can’t earn you a living.  At the very least, consider whether there are other people who also love what you love – can you be absolutely sure that there isn’t a way of making a living from sharing your knowledge and passion for your favourite subject with them?

So – don’t do what you love and expect the money to follow.  Do what you love anyway, and remain open to the possibilities.  You could be surprised.  Whatever your dream is, I wish you well.  Start small, but start now – and be happy.

Brian

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© Brian Cormack Carr, 2009

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