Is Your Hobby Really Your Dream Job?
A couple of years back, somebody loaned me a copy of Marsha Sinetar's Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow. At the time, I completely agreed with the basic tenets of the book: that many of us are not doing the work we should be; that far too many of us have hobbies we can turn into meaningful work; and other similar sentiments.
I'm not so sure, though, if the philosophy behind the book is right.
If that's the case--that we should turn our hobbies into moneymaking propositions--then there's a heck of a lot of people who should just chuck it all and become professional crafters of some sort. There's more to being a professional crafter than just making cool stuff. There's even more to the proposition of turning one's hobby into work than this well-meaning book delivered on.
Specifically, what constitutes "a hobby"? Most people think a hobby is something like knitting or crocheting; bass fishing or wood carving. Or writing. Nobody thinks that accounting or following the business page of the NY Times could be a hobby. Why would anybody want to do those kinds of boring things for hobbies??
Frankly, I enjoy reading the business page as a hobby. It's not anything I want to do with any particular skill--I'm honestly not at all interested in business kinds of stuff. Get an MBA? Given the choice between shaving my head and an MBA, I'd take the shaven head. Even if it was two years of a shaven head, I'd deal--invest in hats and sunscreen. Business administration holds no major interest for me, yet, oddly, I really, really like reading the Times business page, as well as the Wall Street Journal. I read those things like some people read the latest on Brad, Jen, and Angelina. I love to say "oh, my, look who's the head of MicroChip, Inc.! He certainly can wear a suit!"
To me, a hobby is something you do to pass the time....it is a pass-time. My sense is that it stimulates one's mind and keeps one busy, but it's something that you only want to dabble in, not do as a full-time job. A hobby is something to distract you from your job, which you can like, but you don't necessarily want to take home with you.
That would be like waking up and finding your boss having his coffee in your kitchen.
Think of it this way, too: if your hobby is supposed to be turned into your full-time job, and your full-time job should be directly related to your hobby, where's your spare time. No spare time smacks to me of a certain old-line Protestantism that eschewed creating things like paintings and poetry because they were seen as idolitrous and frivolous pursuits. Further, the pursuit of one or the other was believed to lead one off the straight and narrow and right into the arms of Satan.
There was no art in the world of puritanical thinking--only the functional. There was no poetry either--only the sermon.
Nose to the grindstone in order to please God...which also leads to being a Good Capitalist.
So, perhaps by turning one's hobby into one's full-time job, and being full-throttle all the time, with no spare time, is nothing more than allowing capitalism to control every single aspect of your waking life.
Shoot me if I ever do that.
However, there is something to it when you have been doing something you detest for years, something you only like to dabble at, and then come home and devote every waking hour to your hobby. You can't get enough of that hobby, and everybody tells you that your hobby isn't anything you can honestly make money at. That's the kind of thing I've been looking at since last week--how my business hobby got turned into a job and my writing hobby ended up on the back burner.
And how I keep wanting to make the business hobby into the work thing because it's a heck of a lot easier to be a business-minded individual in our world than it is to be a flamboyant thinking type. Who ever heard of making money by thinking??
I tend to think though that there are lots of people who don't get that their hobby is best just as a hobby--and that there aren't scads of us who really *should* take that hobby and make it their life's work.
Sometimes a pass-time should be left as a past-time, a stress reliever, an outlet, not a life's work. If the pass-time consumes you, well, that's another story...
So, if Steady Eddie comes over tonight and tells me he's ditching his job as an engineer so that he can pursue a career as an Adirondack mountain guide, I'm going to have to send him to therapy.
I'm not so sure, though, if the philosophy behind the book is right.
If that's the case--that we should turn our hobbies into moneymaking propositions--then there's a heck of a lot of people who should just chuck it all and become professional crafters of some sort. There's more to being a professional crafter than just making cool stuff. There's even more to the proposition of turning one's hobby into work than this well-meaning book delivered on.
Specifically, what constitutes "a hobby"? Most people think a hobby is something like knitting or crocheting; bass fishing or wood carving. Or writing. Nobody thinks that accounting or following the business page of the NY Times could be a hobby. Why would anybody want to do those kinds of boring things for hobbies??
Frankly, I enjoy reading the business page as a hobby. It's not anything I want to do with any particular skill--I'm honestly not at all interested in business kinds of stuff. Get an MBA? Given the choice between shaving my head and an MBA, I'd take the shaven head. Even if it was two years of a shaven head, I'd deal--invest in hats and sunscreen. Business administration holds no major interest for me, yet, oddly, I really, really like reading the Times business page, as well as the Wall Street Journal. I read those things like some people read the latest on Brad, Jen, and Angelina. I love to say "oh, my, look who's the head of MicroChip, Inc.! He certainly can wear a suit!"
To me, a hobby is something you do to pass the time....it is a pass-time. My sense is that it stimulates one's mind and keeps one busy, but it's something that you only want to dabble in, not do as a full-time job. A hobby is something to distract you from your job, which you can like, but you don't necessarily want to take home with you.
That would be like waking up and finding your boss having his coffee in your kitchen.
Think of it this way, too: if your hobby is supposed to be turned into your full-time job, and your full-time job should be directly related to your hobby, where's your spare time. No spare time smacks to me of a certain old-line Protestantism that eschewed creating things like paintings and poetry because they were seen as idolitrous and frivolous pursuits. Further, the pursuit of one or the other was believed to lead one off the straight and narrow and right into the arms of Satan.
There was no art in the world of puritanical thinking--only the functional. There was no poetry either--only the sermon.
Nose to the grindstone in order to please God...which also leads to being a Good Capitalist.
So, perhaps by turning one's hobby into one's full-time job, and being full-throttle all the time, with no spare time, is nothing more than allowing capitalism to control every single aspect of your waking life.
Shoot me if I ever do that.
However, there is something to it when you have been doing something you detest for years, something you only like to dabble at, and then come home and devote every waking hour to your hobby. You can't get enough of that hobby, and everybody tells you that your hobby isn't anything you can honestly make money at. That's the kind of thing I've been looking at since last week--how my business hobby got turned into a job and my writing hobby ended up on the back burner.
And how I keep wanting to make the business hobby into the work thing because it's a heck of a lot easier to be a business-minded individual in our world than it is to be a flamboyant thinking type. Who ever heard of making money by thinking??
I tend to think though that there are lots of people who don't get that their hobby is best just as a hobby--and that there aren't scads of us who really *should* take that hobby and make it their life's work.
Sometimes a pass-time should be left as a past-time, a stress reliever, an outlet, not a life's work. If the pass-time consumes you, well, that's another story...
So, if Steady Eddie comes over tonight and tells me he's ditching his job as an engineer so that he can pursue a career as an Adirondack mountain guide, I'm going to have to send him to therapy.
posted by Tish Grier at 5:01 PM
6 Comments:
I think there are things that if you can make money at, you can be totally happy doing them, even if they ARE hobbies. Like if you are totally consumed by wanting to help baby whales in third world countries, then get a job doing that! But I know for me, my creativity gets stifled when I try to do my hobbies as jobs. I used to make special order knitted items like socks. I had a few pleasant experiences and thought OK, I can do this, but people ended up taking advantage of the situation and being extraordinarily picky and cheap and I realized that I began to dread knitting which I once loved so much. So I stopped. I finished the last things I was making on commission and just stopped taking orders. I will do things for friends, usually just for the price of yarn, but that's about it. I think you're very right in that making a hobby your job leaves you with no release unless you pick up another hobby.
However, having said that, let me now contradict myself... kind of....
Knowing myself and who I am, I think I could be VERY happy preserving (a fancy term for fixing) old books. I would love to work in an academic library or a museum and keep up their collections. Although this is an offshoot of my love of bookbinding, it's not the creative part that really makes me happy. It's the rather mundane, every day, fix this torn page here, rebind this spine there, kind of thing. It ties in with my love of books and book construction, without stifling the creativity and love I find in binding my own books from scratch. Just some rambling thoughts from my own experience.
But I love nothing better than to leave my boring and non-creative job at work and come home to sit around, watch crappy british movies and knit my little heart out.
you know, Mim, I was thinking of you, and of Heather, when I wrote about knitting and crocheting in the post. I think Heather's got some balance with it for now...and I've seen where a person can get taken advantage of, like what happened with you.
So many people who start crafting as a business don't get that there is a business part to it that has to be maintained for it to grow and be profitable. And that it's a heck of alot of work when you're doing it for someone else! Heck, even building the stock for one craft fair can take up to a year, depending on how much time you want to put into it and how fast you work.
But, as I said, I think it's the business part of stuff that most people forget about. It isn't just about the love of crafting--you also have to love promoting oneself, doing the business bookkeeping, etc. until you make enough to hire someone else to do it.
Personally, I used to do the most, and best of my crocheting while "watching" baseball or hockey games. It's amazing how much of a hockey game one can follow without even paying attention!
Be that as it may, something like book preservation, as you're talking about, can be turned into a job with the right education, career guidance, and connections. Often specialty jobs require some decent connections, either made in school or already in your life. It's amazing how so many "vocations" or life's work kinds of jobs just about require some connections somewhere. If you're an unknown quantity, with just a good education, it can be very tough to break into a vocation.
But you never know, Mim...you might be discover something else about yourself that will be the meaningful work of your life, if that's what you want!
Yes, I have some balance for now. I've had similar experiences with my crocheting, attempting to make it a business, but I've realized I like just selling things here and there and making what I want and not having to worry about what will sell. I love it but I'm not passionate enough about it to invest the time and energy it would take to make it a business.
I think for something to turn into a career it has to be more than a hobby, it has to be a full-out obsession. Some hobbies are obsessions but some really aren't. Instead of looking at hobbies as possible careers, look at your obsessions, the things you sneak in whenever you get a spare minute and feel like you just can't live without. If you're that passionate about something then maybe you've got enough energy invested in it to really go after it as a career, because that takes hard work.
It's not like the title of that book, that's so misleading. You don't just start doing something you like and then shazam! The money gushes in. You have to love it enough to put in the long hours and all the energy and do all the crappy peon stuff to build a career out of it.
Psychology has been like that for me for years. I was always reading psych-related stuff, always trying to figure out people's behavior. I'm one of those people that others come to talk to and lean on, etc. I ended up at the complaint desk in every service job I've ever had because I'm good with the "difficult" people that no one else wants to deal with. Working it into a career now hasn't changed my passion for it. I still get excited just thinking about it.
Sometimes your best career choice is so obvious that it has to jump out and bite you in the tush before you see it clearly.
Heather...
I've always had a problem with that book title making it sound like money will simply just pop up in your bank account! I don't think so!
you're right, too, about that obsession thing, and the way you described your passion for psychology is one of the few descriptions I've read that really captures what that passion is about. If something really is a 24/7, over-arching thing in your life, and you are always learning about it, then it's something to pursue and not dismiss. That's kind of why I'm looking at gradschool again--no matter how hard I try to get away from theology, it's like a darned bommerang and I keep coming back to it (or it keeps hitting me in the head, I'm not sure.) I blame all those really cool old guys (and I mean grandfatherly old) I hung out with when I was just a 20-something sprite, who kept encouraging me to use my brain. Maybe that's *really* what they meant when they accused Socraties of corrupting young people! heaven forbid we should learn to think philosophically!
I agree with you Tish. If your hobby for fun, becomes your full time for money - the lines become blurred and then it isn't quite so much fun any more. I dabble in real estate, as a hobby. I love it. I analyze the markets, I play mortgage broker - but I would not want to be a realtor and depend upon other people's buying impulses and budgets control my self sufficiency. Then, it's work - with rules, and bills, and lots of handholding. And then suddenly I'm not interested in it anymore. I think it's one thing if you're looking for a PT job for "funsies" and so you work someplace where you have an interest - e.g. Barnes and Nobles, or Michaels Crafts (if you're crafty!). But when your career path and main bread and butter stems from a hobby - I'm not sure that it's destined to be long lived. It's happened, but I think those people are few and far between.
S & R....between both your comments I can see where the idea of doing a hobby as a part-time job can be a good compromise. Even then, it's probably contingent on the individual...
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