Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Day Job

Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Day Job

by | Jul 14, 2014 | In The Boat

Pursue Your Passion, Do What You Love, Follow Your Bliss, etc.

I am a big fan of the idea of “pursuing your passion” or “doing what you love” or “following your bliss”. After all, life is too precious a gift to waste it on something that doesn’t matter to you. While I fully agree with the need to find and do what you love, I’ve been burned and left a little stuck by a more aggressive approach to jumping on this path.

Risky, risky

The more aggressive approach, at its most extreme, looks like quitting your day job and pouring all of your resources into doing your own thing. For some that’s really exciting and for others terrifying. Regardless of your relationship to risk, I believe that just jumping ship is not the best course of action. I’d like to make a case for why you shouldn’t quit your job… yet.

Two Types of People

You are one of two types of people. The first knows what they want to do, knows what they love, and are willing to make sacrifices in order to pursue that thing. The second isn’t quite sure what they love, maybe they enjoy many different things, but they haven’t quite decided yet what it is they want to do. If you’re one of those who enjoys many different things, I want to make the point here that you don’t just have to chose one passion and that’s all you will do for the rest of your life, but you do need to choose one passion to start with and build upon. In either case, whether you know what you want to do, or you haven’t quite figured it out, it is very discouraging and potentially detrimental to your passion to put the financial pressure on its success or failure before it is ready and able to support you.

The Fear of Your Passion Becoming a J O B

Many artist are afraid of charging money or turning what they do into a business, because they are afraid it’s going to start to feel like a job. I believe the real reason is that their passion is not in a position yet to truly support them. In this case, keeping your day job and paying your bills while you build your passion on the side ensures that you keep the financial pressure off of the passion so that it can thrive.

The Danger of Compromise

Another thing that happens when one jumps into their passion to soon is that they are more willing, or maybe even feel that they must, compromise on their values and process in order to make ends meet. This is where pursuing your passion really can feel like a job. When your finances depend on you taking every job that comes your way, you open yourself up to clients that you should not take on, but feel you must because of the deficit in your budget. What if you only did work that you love? What if you only worked with clients who understood your value and were willing to follow your process and compensate your fairly for your work? What if you could refuse to work with clients who you could determine would not be a good fit for you? You are more free to operate this way when your passion is not distressed by the need to make ends meet.

Being in the Position of Strength

There are a lot of people who say that when you start out, you should take whatever work you can get. If you have a day job that is meeting your financial needs, it puts you in the position of strength. You can literally afford to walk away from a bad client. This doesn’t have to result in less work either. In addition to the good clients you may potentially take on, you can work on self-initiated projects, or do free work for clients as a way of building a strong portfolio and putting out regular work.

Leave Room for Discovery

Back on the two types of people… if you are someone who knows what they want to do, building it on the side is a great way to discover whether it truly is something that you love, or that it was just something you liked the idea of doing. Maybe when you really get into it, you’ll find that you don’t really want to do it at all. Maybe you’ll discover that you want to do something “a few degrees” to the right or left. In any case, this process of discovery is best played out in the context of having your financial needs met by something else. If you are like me and you have trouble zeroing in on what you want to do, the process is similar… you’ve got to pick something and dig deeper into it before you determine whether or not it’s something you want to make your primary pursuit, and unless this process is free from the stress of finances, it can cause you to try to rush through the process to quickly or even cause you to feel stuck, not sure of which direction to go.

Have an Exit Plan

Have an exit plan. The point is not to keep a day job indefinitely so that you never put the financial responsibility on your passion, but your goal is to grow your passion to the point where it can support you financially. Make projections about where you will be in 3 months, in 6 months, in a year. Set some goals and see how they play out. Over time you will be able to get a sense for what it will take for you to be able to quit your day job. I find that just knowing there is an end in sight, understanding the role my day job plays in helping me protect and grow my passion, helps me to view my day job with a better perspective.

Why You SHOULD Quit

There are a few circumstances under which I would recommend quitting. You should quit your day job if your job leaves you no time to do what you love. You should quit if your day job environment is so stressful that it is emotionally draining or leaves you little energy for creative work. If you quit your day job for any of these reasons, you should be on the look out for something that will do a better job of meeting your needs while leaving you the time and energy to build what you love. That could also be a good reason to quit your day job, that you’ve found another day job that covers your expenses and allows you more time. Finally, you should quit when you’re passion is ready to support you. These are good reasons to quit.

A Job is a Tool

My encouragement for you is that you not look at your day job as your livelihood. Life is about much more than just taking care of one’s expenses. What is truly life giving for you and your family is having your needs met AND being able to share what you love to do with the world. A day job is no more than a useful tool that you can use strategically to build your passion.

HD Lettering Photography Wallpaper – Collaboration with Photographer Helen Montoya

HD Lettering Photography Wallpaper – Collaboration with Photographer Helen Montoya

by | Jul 8, 2014 | Projects

For awhile our good friend and family photographer, Helen Montoya, has been collaborating with my wife, sending her photographs which my wife then takes and uses as inspiration for a fictional work she is currently developing. (Click here to check out her stories). I thought it would be fun to do something similar, but to instead write and hand-letter a short quote to overlay on the image and offer them as HD wallpapers. Helen and I will be collaborating for 30 pieces which we will complete over 30 weeks.

You can keep up with our progress here on this page:

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Dealing With the Reasons We Seek Distractions

Dealing With the Reasons We Seek Distractions

by | Jul 7, 2014 | In The Boat

Distractions come in many forms these days. From social media, unexpected e-mails, phone calls or visits, to distractions in our environment, it’s really easy to let ourselves get distracted. Sometimes I find that despite my best efforts to build barriers that should keep me from distractions, I still seek them out. I decided to start asking myself the question… why am I seeking out distraction?

I came up with four major roots of distraction and some ideas for how to combat them in the future:

1. Lack of a Good Plan

The first and most common reason I seek distractions is that I don’t have a plan for what I’m doing. I may have a general idea of what I want to accomplish, but if I haven’t given myself a specific or small enough task on which to focus, the size of whatever is in front of me seems intimidating and I stall. Sometimes I’ll be going along just fine and finish all of my tasks for the day, but because I didn’t have a plan for what I would do if I completed all of the things on my list, I end up meandering.

It’s not just having a plan, but knowing the level of plan detail you need in order to stay engaged that will help you to continue to stay focused on your work. If you get to a project and find yourself wanting to stall, break the project down even further and give yourself a more palatable task. If you get to the end of your list for the day, take a few minutes to plan strategically what you will do with the rest of your time.

2. Boooooring!

Another reason I seek distractions is that I feel bored. Everything, even the stuff that you love to do, has some boring task associated with it. There is a phase of the web development process that, though I’ve done it dozens of times, is extremely boring and tedious. I know I can do it, I know that it needs to be done, but it’s just time consuming and boring.

Find a way to add some excitement to this activity. Maybe time yourself and then the next time you can try to beat your record (as long as it doesn’t effect the overall quality of your work). Do some research to see if there is a way to accomplish this particular task more quickly with the right kind of tools. Maybe you are in a position to hand this activity off to someone else, so you can focus on what you really love.

If there’s no way to make this task interesting, just start. Human beings are naturally inclined to see a task through to completion once they’ve started. Starting is often the most difficult part, but I’ve been surprised before at how much I’ve been able to accomplished by simply choosing to start.

3. Unsure of What I’m Doing

A third reason I seek out distraction is that I have gaps in my knowledge. One of the ways I grow is by taking on jobs that, while within my expertise, contain some aspect or task that I know in theory I can do, but maybe haven’t done before. I have gotten in over my head a few times because of this, and sometimes in the face of something I don’t know how to do I become paralyzed.

When faced with an aspect of a project that I don’t fully understand, I remember the three R’s (I just made these up): Relax, Research, & Reach out.

Relax
Sometimes the best thing to do is to find some other part of the project that you do know how to do, and do that instead. Getting your mind away from the fear of an unknown thing and focused on a task that is familiar relaxes you and can put you in the right frame of mind for discovering a solution to an unknown problem.

Research
Researching is a GREAT practice and can help you grow exponentially in your expertise. You may have difficulty at first finding the answers you are looking for, but over time you’ll grow more proficient in your ability to research, using better search language and finding more reliable sources.

Reach Out
Finally, the most important thing you can do is to be plugged into a community of creatives who can call upon you and whom you can call upon when you run into difficult problems. I’m a part of the seanwes community and it is phenomenal! If you are not surrounded by people who are doing the same kind of thing you are doing with similar values and goals, GET SOME PEOPLE! We freelancers often operate as “lone rangers” but the best work out there comes from people who either collaborated with or were supported by a community of people who cared about them and their work.

4. I Don’t Really Care About This

This can be a tough one, especially if you’ve built a career or an identity around a specific creative pursuit. In this instance distraction becomes a welcome escape from the work that you don’t love, but it is especially toxic because it causes feelings of guilt… guilt that you are not doing something you do not feel passionate about. How yucky!

In this case I would welcome another type of distraction. Zoom out and be honest with yourself about this thing. The sooner you can identify it as something you no longer love and create an exit plan, the sooner you’ll be able to get back to work. Sometimes, knowing there’s a light at the end of the tunnel can give us the resolve we need to finish something.

Don’t Focus On The Distraction

It doesn’t matter what the distractions are if you can successfully identify and deal with the root of the distraction. Next time you reach out to distractions, instead of giving yourself a hard time about whatever thing it is you are allowing to distract you, ask yourself these questions: Do I have a clear and solid enough plan for what I need to be doing right now? Can I make this boring task more exciting or shift my focus to something else? What can I do to grow in my expertise so I can feel more confident when approaching this task? Do I really care about what I’m doing?

No One Will Chase Your Dreams For You

No One Will Chase Your Dreams For You

by | Jul 4, 2014 | portfolio

“No One Will Chase Your Dreams For You”

This was one of my first lettering compositions and one that I am very proud of. I’ve stylized it to read “You chase your dreams.” I’ve come to believe that, though people get lucky from time to time, the only common denominator that matters when it comes to realizing your dreams is what you choose to do. Don’t depend on or hold out for something or someone to come along and help you fulfill your dreams. Choose daily to do those things that will make your dreams a reality.

Process Shots: