Turning your passions into work is really popular advice. At my day job, I’m mentoring a fresh crop of school-aged interns. One of them learned that I had a blog and was super excited to ask me about it.
“I run an Instagram account where I talk about beauty and self-acceptance,” she told me, “and I LOVE it.”
And I could tell that she meant it! Her whole face lit up. She was practically wiggling in her seat with excitement. She described the positive, loving feedback she received from doing it, and how it gave her a true sense of purpose. “I want to eventually figure out how to monetize it and potentially turn it into a career. Any advice on how to do that?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “Don’t.”
How many times have you heard some variation of the following?
“Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life!”
If you’re anything like me, the answer is “thousands of times.” I’d even describe it as foundational to how modern Americans have been taught to think about careers.
Let me tell you why I’ve come to regard it as one of the worst, most destructive pieces of faux wisdom out there.
By way of explanation, a truly disgusting metaphor
My partner and I love to kiss each other.
Disturbing, I know. Bear with me!
When he takes the dogs out so I can sleep in a bit, I thank him with a kiss. When I see him scowling at a work problem, I give him an encouraging peck him on the cheek. Squeezing past each other in our too-small kitchen? Perfect excuse to steal a smooch! Some couples aren’t super physically demonstrative, but we are. (Piggy note: It’s disgusting and I hate them. Emotions are to be bottled down deep where they will never see the light of day and eventually wither and die.)
Crucially, there’s nothing dutiful about our kisses. They don’t have that Mike-Pence-and-Mother vibe. Every single one is a choice. We’re constantly actively reaffirming how we feel about each other with these spontaneous expressions of genuine affection.
Now, might this feel different if kissing was our job?
Say some rich weirdo pays us a modest wage to be full-time spouse-smoochers. We gotta hit a quota of at least fifty kisses every day, plus two make-out sessions lasting a minimum of fifteen minutes. If we fail to deliver, we’re fired. We’d lose our health insurance. We’d live off our savings until we found other work. If we couldn’t, we’d lose our home and fill our bellies at a food bank. Just like how it works with real jobs!
Obligation kills passions
At first, maybe it feels great! Maybe we go at it like teenagers for a while, thrilled to be paid to do something we’d happily do for free. But the shine comes off fast.
We start documenting our kisses so we don’t lose track. We make spreadsheets and hold daily check-in meetings. If we’re short, we woodenly press our mouths together the requisite number of times. “Sixteen… seventeen… eighteen…” The first time makes us laugh, but soon it’s a routine.
Bad stuff happens. We each get a stomach bug. We’re in a fender-bender. An acquaintance passes away. But even when we’re both feeling sad and un-sexy, we have an obligation to make out. So we do. But we can’t stand it. We’re just waiting for the buzz of the timer, telling us we’re allowed to stop. When it does, we’re eager to push each other away, and seek genuine solace somewhere else.
I come to resent the feeling of his lips, his arms, his stupid beard scratching my face. A pleasant ritual that used to make me feel so relaxed and loved has become a source of stress. Eventually we’re unhappy enough to seek other jobs. We’re still together, but we don’t kiss anymore—or it takes us a long, long time to rediscover kissing each other.
This is what happens when you transform hobbies and passions into work.
Work is work and play is play
It would be great if we could make work feel like play. So efficient! So pleasant! But it never works out in the long run, because play is diametrically opposed to work.
My definition of work isn’t “stuff we’re paid to do.” (The stay-at-home parent of a newborn isn’t getting paid for late-night feedings and diaper changes. But they’re definitely doing work!)
Rather, work is the stuff we’re obligated to do. When we feel tired, or sick, or bored, or distraught… it doesn’t matter. Work still has to get done. This reality exists outside of economic systems like capitalism. After all, Bronze Age farmers couldn’t take mental health breaks during planting season without the risk of starving in the coming year. But capitalism does create structural incentives that drive ever-greater production, so I think it feels especially exhausting and cyclical.
In contrast, play is the stuff we choose to do. Passions feel joyful because we seek them out. They trigger positive mental shifts really reliably, because we come to them prepared for the emotional transformation they trigger. When bored, we seek out stimulation with a book or a movie. When lonely, we seek out acceptance with tabletop games or a night of dancing. Hobbies are like the lover in a Jeff Buckley song: they’re always waiting for you to come over.
I think the advice to “do what you love and you’ll never work” ignores the crucial role that context plays in determining enjoyment. If I have to shuffle into the shower at 4:30 a.m. because I have an early shift at my job, it feels like work. But if I take a long, hot bath on a rainy weekend afternoon, it feels like play.
No matter how much you love the activity, its obligatory nature means work is still work.
The fun to un-fun ratio
Every activity has individual components you can enjoy or not enjoy.
To use the example of my young intern: the thing she loves the most is engaging with her followers. There’s stuff she doesn’t like that she has to do to get to the good stuff: editing the videos, for example. The ratio of fun to un-fun is high, though, so it all works out!
But when you monetize something, you’re inevitably introducing more and more of the un-fun activities into your life. She’d have to review SEO dashboards, work on pitch decks for sponsors, fight content thieves, file taxes… The more you careerify, the more your ratio of fun to un-fun activities plummets.
Obviously, life comes with lots of un-fun activities. We have to do lots of them, every single day. But if you accept more than are necessary, that ain’t living your best life! You’re right back to the thing you were trying to avoid: a life you dread and feel the need to escape from. Except now you don’t even have your passions or hobbies to give you solace!
I have a friend who loved to knit. She did it all the time, found it super relaxing. At the urging of well-meaning friends, she opened a little shop. Commissions flooded in. She got backed up. People got angry. Pressure grew, and she started having panic attacks. After a moment of clarity, she closed her store.
She doesn’t knit anymore. She’s all in on pottery, a new hobby she took up to relieve the pressure others put on her to knit. I hope she never makes a dime doing it.
Exploit skills, not passions
I used to draw all the time. From my first year in grade school to my senior year in college, my notebooks were full of doodles. In art classes, my work stood out. I was really good.
Despite this, I never really self-identified as an artist. I enjoyed it, and I was good at it… but it was a skill, not a passion.
(All of this made a lot more sense when I was diagnosed with ADHD in my thirties. Baby Kitty learned it was a socially acceptable way to channel the restlessness in her body and mind. Skill followed practice, not interest.)
So I went into a career as a graphic designer.
That was an awesome choice for me. Turns out, artistic skills are rarer and more valuable than artistic passions. When you’re uncommonly skillful, you can exploit that skill for greater career capital. Sorry, sorry, I know that sounds corporate af. But it means you’re in greater demand, with more bargaining power, earning potential, job stability, and task autonomy.
In other words: don’t do what you love. Do what you’re good at.
If you don’t know how to tease your skills out of your passions, don’t worry! I wrote a whole dang guide on it here:
Not everything needs to be monetized
We’ve talked a lot about “hustle culture” and productivity porn. All of it negative. See below.
- Romanticizing the Side Hustle: When 1 Job Isn’t Enough
- I Am So Over Productivity Porn
- Stop Measuring Your Time in Beyoncé Hours
- Season 2, Episode 9: “I Use My Free Time to Volunteer. Should I Focus on Making Money Instead?”
- My Career Transition Succeeded When I Gave Fewer Fucks, Made More Friends, and Had More Fun
- Why You Should Take a Break: The Importance of Rest and Relaxation
It doesn’t seem to have made a difference! Because I still cannot throw a rock without hitting some hack posting “inspiring” Steve Jobs quotes laid over a desaturated photo of someone standing in silhouette on a beach. (Like Steve Jobs wasn’t an unhinged and greedy monster, but a taller, beachier Yoda.)
Those people are trying to sell you a glossy new reprint of a very old narrative: Productivity is both the highest calling of mankind, as well as the only ingredient in the recipe for success.
It’s bullshit.
Consider this your counter-programming.
Your hobbies and your passions are a big part of your identity. Much bigger, in fact, than what you do in your job or career. They are beautiful. The magic they can work on you is powerful. Do not sacrifice them on the altar of something so low and common as a job. It’s the easiest way to grow indifferent to what used to inspire you.
Fellow bitches, does this feel true to you? Did you ever try to monetize a hobby or passion, only to have it go horribly wrong? Or did it go super-duper right, and I’m just talking outta my butt?! Please tell us your stories in the comments below!
Yes, to all this!
I needed to read this article!
I’ve been thinking about my hobbies (sewing mostly) and wondering if I should start “scaling up” and posting on social media and trying to make it pay me. And all that sounds so dull! I make stuff and sometimes I show people, and I do keep paper records of what worked and what didn’t, but I don’t PERFORM.
Mad props to the costumers and creators on Insta and Youtube. I like looking at their content and learning from them, but I don’t want to deal with the editing and moderating.
I miss/crave community. Do you have any tips for meeting people without making it work?
> Do you have any tips for meeting people without making it work?
I’ll butt in and offer my two cents: meeting potential friend types as an adult is a pain in the ass. It’s hard to get the number of hours of face time you need to really feel like you know someone (school makes this easy by trapping us with a bunch of our peers all day every day for months).
The places I’ve had the best luck meeting new people have been interest groups (aka fandom and hobbies). I have a bunch of friends from when I was doing NaNoWriMo every year. I made my most recent new friend at a meetup for a podcast we both like (we were each there by ourselves so I commented on how awkward this kind of thing is and she immediately agreed. Ice: broken! Of course, the pandemic has made actual face time tricky, but we’re managing.). I met my ex at a Meetup.com gathering for bloggers. I’m sure there are other similar types of things – take a class, join a casual sportsball team, etc. Work is the easiest place to meet new people, but not the easiest place to make actual friends.
My advice: Go where there are people who like at least one of the things you like, and make yourself talk to at least two of them before leaving. Repeat as necessary.
I’ve had similar thoughts about crafting. You could try seeing if there are any “stitch & bitch” groups in your area/online. I connected with one through my school and we’ve been meeting virtually. Let’s bring back quilting circles!
I work in the TV, and I remember seeing a meme in one of the many film and TV social media sites that I’m paraphrasing here but it said something like “pick a job you love and you’ll work every day of your life because you just turned your favourite hobby into a job. Congratulations.”
I’m currently working in the cutting room as an assistant editor. When I went to film school, I wanted to be some version of a writer/director/storyteller, and wound up in the cutting room because I was good at it. But it wasn’t necessarily my biggest “passion” so maybe that’s what’s keeping me safe from losing interest. That said, I rarely watch TV or films to switch off anymore. I prefer reading books.
In the beginning, I was kicking myself for not pursuing writing/directing, but I’m starting to reassess that now. I’m making good money, and if I take breaks between jobs, it might allow time to persue passion projects that I don’t have to monetize.
Basically, I think a lot of the people in my industry can relate to this on some level, because the hours can be oppressive and punishing, and I don’t think people would put up with the working conditions if they hadn’t at least started out being passionate about it. But whether or not you remain passionate about it, your relationship to it changes once you start making a living off it– I think that’s pretty indisputable.
100%. First job I had in the UK was working for a fabric importer/wholesaler. I never loved my beloved sewing and fabric craft less. In fact I barely sewed until a full year after I left. I was just sick of something I thought I could never be sick of.
I’m straddling the two sides of this right now, and have been for about 1.5 years. I started painting and was pretty prolific, so I wanted to show and sell my work to bring in money for more supplies & to clear space in my studio. So now I have a watercolor painting side biz…and sometimes it’s great and other times it’s totally a drag! And the internet bombards me with the message that it Should! Be! My! Full! Time! Job! and that I’m failing because I still have a terrible tedious 9-5 working on software I don’t give a shit about.
But you know what? I made about $1500 total last year selling art. Know how much my terrible software job pays? Nearly 100x that. I am not happy there, but it pays me so much that it’s still the right choice. Because I like having money. Because I need to have a lot of money saved up to feel secure. And it’s really hard to find a dream job of sitting on my butt, eating chocolate and reading books all day that pays that kind of money!
I have mixed feelings on this post.
I agree that making a career out of a passion can tarnish your love for it but as a CPA I have a lot of small business clients that have chosen to pursue their passions as a business and if you asked them what you’d prefer to do for a living, they’d probably answer ” nothing”.
I think one has to evaluate where they are in life.
I love dogs and have the equipment and facility to offer dog training lessons. I do it as a side hustle when I feel like it. I don’t let it become too big as I really don’t need the money and if I did that I’d be like your knitting lady, overwhelmed. But kept within limits, it’s a great way to make some extra cash, and do what I love. You need to know at what level does monetizing your passion become too much and scale accordingly.
The other thing you discussed is doing what you are good at, and conversely just because you love doing something doesn’t mean you are good at it. Back to our knitting lady…she opened a knitting store. Wait being a store keeper isn’t knitting! She strayed away from what she was good at. I bet if she wanted to make money knitting she’d have been much happier teaching it and selling on Etsy. Because she’s good at knitting not running a business.
Two thoughts, possibly in opposite directions:
I would make an exception for people who ‘can’t not do’ their hobby as a job – I’ve seen this in academics, authors, and programmers, many of whom have tried doing other things (well, maybe not the programmers), and just kinda bounced off any alternative career they pursued.
However, for the rest of us, I would wholeheartedly endorse this article and go even further to say ‘don’t work at something that has overlapping needs on your brain / body as your hobby’. I used to work (various roles) in software, which thoroughly exercised the creative and problem-solving side of my brain. Unfortunately that meant that I had no creativity left over for the arts and crafts that used to be my hobbies. However, I could do martial arts, because I wasn’t physically exhausted. Now I’m retired-ish with vague plans to do some tutoring, and am slowly getting back into the crafts as the burnout wears off.
You make such a good point about people who “can’t not do” this. I ended up dropping out of academia because of a mental health crisis early on. It was the right decision in the context. That said: I still love my field, and I definitely can’t turn it into a hobby. I try to stay on top of some aspects, I read about things, but if you’re not working in academia, you just don’t have access to enough resources to do hobby research. Not unless you’re rich enough that nothing is a barrier anymore.
I also understand the drive to turn what you love into a job so that you have more time to pursue it. And I understand how often that turns sour. I think the core of the problem might be trying to optimize and monetize every aspect of your life. There is nothing wrong with turning some hobbies into work in some ways, but you need to keep a healthy dose of play in your life if you do that, and you have to know your limits. I love writing. I’d love to write and publish a novel one day. I also know that I’d hate doing all the promo work authors have to do on social media to increase their sales. I know I’m not going to do that work. I know that this means I’ll never sell well. I know I might turn out to be a completely flopped self-publishing attempt only friends heard about. I’m okay with that.
Something you’re good at that you also don’t hate…
Here’s the sad stories of everyone we knew growing up who had passions: https://nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/how-important-is-lifelong-passion-for-a-career-a-sad-story/ We could not think of a single person for whom a passion actually worked out as a job.
Excellent blog post and comments. I agree 100%. I have a good paying job doing something for which I’m naturally skilled and don’t mind doing for money (editing & forms design). Not my passion, but I love the paycheck and benefits. Self-isolation during the pandemic gave me time to think about what my passions are and which ones I want to focus on: superior physical/mental health and well-being, gardening, cooking, and photography. I don’t need to monetize any of them — just enjoy them!
THANK YOU FOR THIS! I’ve gotten pretty decent at crochet (certainly not expert level, but I’ve made things for myself and gifts for others) and I keep feeling the pressure to make it a side hustle and take commissions. I work a crummy retail job (and I’m switching to being a seasonal worker since I’m going back to school full time) so money to pay for books and transportation is important. But every time I’ve felt forced into making something I lose interest in the entire craft. Working on a bag my mom asked me to make her took me forever, because it felt like work. And when I tried to work on something for myself I felt guilty for “wasting” my time on something that wasn’t the bag for my mom. I’m very glad I never started taking commissions, because the guilt would’ve only been worse. As it is now, I have several friends at work to bond over shitty customers with, and I’m halfway through making a giant bag for myself. I wouldn’t have either of those if I crocheted full time.
I think a good balance could be selling things that you’ve made without taking commissions. If you make a bag and decide you don’t want to keep it or gift it? Great! Sell it! If someone requests a bag and now you’re ~obligated~ to make it? Terrible, joy-sucking
I love this post so much.
My first aspiration out of college was to be a horse trainer. I love riding, I’m truly good at it, and I had no idea what else to do with my life. I became a groom/assistant trainer for an accomplished rider in my area, was fortunate enough to ride international-level horses and was learning TONS. Unfortunately, I was only paid less than $21K before taxes. Not nearly enough to live on, the hours were excruciatingly long (so no time to get a second job), clients were privileged as*holes, and my boss’s boss (the business owner of the farm) was a sexist creep. I didn’t have enough money to lease one of those fabulous horses, show, and put my name out there. I was also knew I was getting nowhere making minimum payments on my student loans and I would eventually age out of my parents’ health insurance plan. Friends in the industry confirmed they were dealing with the same things and more. I could have traveled to Europe to train with a master, but all of my financial troubles would be waiting for me when I got back. The toxic environment of my job was also making me hate everything about horses and riding and that made me so sad.
I then got a unionized job at a manufacturing site through an acquaintance, and in the following decade, got promotions to a very comfortable pay range. My ability to multi-task and notice and act on tiny details (skills that were essential to taking care of 20+ high-end horses) served me well in what I somewhat-affectionately refer to as my “day job.”
The best thing is that it’s allowed me to purchase my own warmblood mare – a dream I had since I started riding as a little kid! I’m still being mentored by a fabulous trainer who helped me back and start her and I’m so happy with the way things turned out, especially since I was initially berating myself for being a “sellout.” I maintain enough time to go ride my horse every day due to strict work-life balance boundaries I’ve rigidly maintained.
Maybe you could write a post about maintaining work-life balance in the corporate world, especially in environments where so many people feel compelled to be available 24/7? I would love to hear your thoughts on that!
I was also encouraged to monetize my horse passion! Unlike you, I never even tried to do it – what got me was the realization that it would put a certain stress on my horse and I’d have to put a dollar value on her worth to me and my business. As an amateur, if my horse has a medical issue or comes up lame, I get to make decisions about it based on her welfare and best interests, not based on money or business concerns – she’ll always be my partner even if she gets terribly injured and I can never ride her again, and because of that security my relationship with her is one of the most grounding and soothing things in my life. I never want to have to put a dollar value on our relationship!
Also the lack of health insurance freaked me out. Working with half-ton prey animals with metal nailed to their feet and no way to pay medical bills when you fall or get injured? No thanks!
I ended up monetizing a few of my other passions and becoming a physician (which is working out well!), so riding was set on the back burner for a few years, but I’m now able to give it the attention it deserves! I’m glad I kept it a fun hobby. I have a life and hobby outside of my work that helps me set boundaries with my work (“Nope, I can’t take that extra hospital shift, I have a show that weekend, thanks for thinking of me!”), plus I get to keep my girl in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed – everyone wins!
Hey there fellow mare person!
I love your points about keeping the welfare of your girl as a top priority and not boiling it down to a business decision. Through my day job, I can fortunately afford to keep medical and mortality insurance on my mare and it definitely makes me sleep better at night.
Good for you in keeping a healthy work/life balance as well – sometimes it’s hard to stay firm on boundaries like that but it’s always worth it, I’ve found. Wishing you good rides!
Me: I’ve really been enjoying cooking!
Friend: you should start a catering business!
Me: Why would I do that?
Friend: […]
#keephobbieshobbies
My mother was famous for conning me into doing things like this. I completed 1200 out of 1500 required hours at cosmetology school to get my license. She helped pay for school. So naturally I was required to cut her and all her friends hair for free, indefinitely. Done, never wanted to cut hair again.
When I was young I showed interest in making stained glass windows, I took a class. She thought I should make my sister a lamp as a gift and bought the supplies. Never wanted to do it again.
Every time I felt obligated to use my talents for money or to “pay back” my parents I never wanted to do that thing again. I now avoid shit like that and the guilt that goes along with it, and am much happier and less stressed for it.
100% to all of this. I grew up writing and always wanted to write – fiction, poetry, essays, whatever. Now I get paid (well) to write marketing copy all day every day for a thing I don’t care about, and no matter how hard I try I can never pick up writing for myself for very long at a time. It’s been literal years. On the rare occasions when I get an idea for a personal project, it fizzles out within days. I miss it a lot, but I had no backup plan and have no idea what else I could do that would pay what I make. So I’m just hoping to retire early eventually and maybe get to do some things for myself later.
This is one of the reasons why I chose to work as a Librarian instead of as an editor or something. I always knew I wanted to work with books, but I worried that if I became an editor or reviewer or something like that, it would take the fun out of reading since I probably would have to read all kinds of stuff that I might not actually want to read. As a Librarian I still get to work with books, but it hasn’t made reading a chore for me since I’m not reading stuff to get paid. (Bonus – I also constantly find new, interesting books to add to me to-read list when I’m working, it’s awesome!).
This so happened to me! I discovered photography and fell in love. Graduated from college and worked as a product photographer for a few years and then did some video work. I learned that I do not want to be paid to be creative, it’s so much pressure and the burn out is so very real! It took all the fun out of it and became a slog. I work now as a creative project manager and it’s such a better fit, I’m great with people and use my experience in the arts all the time when I’m working with other creatives. I’ve recently started looking at new cameras and have been thinking of starting to shoot again, this time around I’ll keep it just for me.
I was initially of two minds about this post – it would’ve been a really bad idea to monetize my passion for horses (see above) but I’ve been able to combine my passions for science, communication, and advocacy into a deeply fulfilling career as a rural full-spectrum family physician.
Then I realized I’m an employed physician (no having to run my own business, hire/fire staff, deal with patient complaints, collect bills, decide what the letterhead looks like, etc.), I chose to work here partly because of the phenomenal support staff (I haven’t filled out diabetic shoe paperwork since I got here!), and company culture matches my care philosophy, so basically I get paid to do medicine and don’t have to do anything else except sit on a couple of committees a month, all of them directly affecting patient care.
Like you, I didn’t really monetize my passion, I found an intersection between what I’m good at and what I’m passionate about and was able to find a way to get paid for it, and it’s a beautiful thing!
So now I’m of one mind: This is excellent advice and I’m so glad for the reminder to keep fun things fun! Thank you!
As (almost) always, spot on.. please rewrite versions of this every month for your readers.. as old guys like me say, the kids today need to hear this! The work-passion lie is usually nothing more than another manipulative way to get more out of a worker with out paying them any more $$… wake up folks, work is work, and usually it’s not that great. I’ve had a couple of the best and highest paying jobs in my industry and at the end of the day it is still more fun to sit home and read or hang out with my partner watching reruns.. seriously.
I wholeheartedly agree!
Most people don’t realize all the headache that comes with turning something they’re passionate about into a source of income. Eventually (and usually sooner than you’d expect) you end up doing a bunch of busywork and not the thing you were passionate about to begin with. But, even when you still get to do what you enjoy, it’s under such tight deadlines and demands that you can’t take the time to actually enjoy it!
Hi, just here to prove that it can be done! Sewing was my hobby and now it’s my livelihood and I don’t regret it one bit. My partner was an obsessive gamer and now he’s a video game writer & designer. Tip about the sewing, though: you will make much more money and sleep a lot more and have more fun if you stick mostly to TEACHING it, not trying to pay your rent in hemming pants alone. Probably true for many other crafts/fields as well.
Hobbies that become work become less enjoyable and thus no longer a hobby.
Don’t do what you love. Do what you’re good at.
You are dead on, Kitty.
I, too, am a graphic designer, Kitty, here to announce to your readers that there are MANY sub-categories of that career, suitable to the innate qualities and skills of many personalities. I chose the major (in the 1970s), because I was “good at art” and wanted something commercial with a steady salary (and I had NO notions of making paintings based on what I “feel”.) Who has pegged my MB score already?
I moved to NYC with the sole career direction of “not publishing” (pays too little) and “not advertising” (which I can’t stand, in any form, life-long hate of manipulative, meaningless, so-called “communication,” and the notion of spending my whole life trying to invent a new way to sell the same lipstick year after year after year).
Got job doing graphics for architecture. 40 years later, some of the people I met at that job are still hiring me to put together their reports, which require a tiny bit of creativity (based on reading the content, understanding what it means and making decisions based on that, not some arbitrary idea of what something should “look like”) and tons of project management, organizing the content (and the files, ability to work very systematically), attention span to set type for 10 hours at a stretch, ability to keep track of details (for years) and remember (or keep notes about) why you did something (if there’s a lawsuit years later): INTJ.
INTJs are also enormously successful in other licensed/regulated industries (which pay better than so-called “creative industries,” nice side benefit), because we can set the type without screwing up a single character that the lawyers have already approved: banking, securities, insurance, healthcare, utilities, etc.
The life-long, innate interests/skills that I realized (years later) had put me on this path (discovered via What Color Is Your Parachute? and other career self-help books of the 1970s, which is what we used pre-internet)? Throughout my entire childhood, I had extremely neat, organized closets, cabinets, and collections, and I would routinely re-organize my mother’s kitchen to make it function more efficiently. My father had a well organized workshop and garage, and could spend a whole Saturday afternoon contentedly making them even “better.” I’m a chip off that block.
Sometimes the answer is right in front of you. The challenge is to recognize its symptoms and figure out how to interpret them. When you’re good at something, it’s like breathing air: you don’t even realize it is a marketable skill because some people can’t do it (without being supervised, or supported, or whatever), and you are used to ignoring them (or dismissing them, if your J power is really high, mine is) because they are, let’s admit it, hopeless. (Not exactly, they have other skills you don’t have….)
This website can help you sort it all out. There’s good stuff here.
YAS!!!
You know I’m all about this.
I monetized a craft hobby I was passionate about, and it turned out great. And I still wholeheartedly agree with this post. IMO, there’s a sort of temperament and set of skills (partially learned, partially innate) that makes someone a good match for monetizing their hobbies.
Here are some of the things that worked out for me:
– I am EQUALLY AS PASSIONATE about making money as I am about my craft hobby. I Love Making Money. I unironically enjoy the prospect of monetizing things. On the days when crafting is a slog (there are many days), I rely on my desire for $$$ to carry me through. On the days when thoughts of paying rent just aren’t enough (again, that’s a lot of days), I’m able to fall back on my affection and engagement with my craft.
– I like and am good at admin work, organization, and spreadsheets. The thought of tracking a zillion supplies, breaking down costs, researching materials, doing all the tedious humdrum tasks of my craft-turned-business fills me with, if not breathless joy, then a low hum of satisfaction.
– I am good at and don’t hate sales and customer service. Saying that I “like” either of those things would be a stretch, but I spent years doing it successfully at my full time job, so it is now a skillset I possess, a hard-earned toolI can put to work for me in my business. Monetizing a passion means dealing with customers. Dealing with customers mean customer service, and you can’t flinch away from it.
Could not disagree more!
“In other words: don’t do what you love. Do what you’re good at.”
Typically what people are good at they LOVE doing! I am not good at doing math, for example. I hate math. This was never my strong suit in school because it gives me a headache. Therefore I’m not an accountant or anything involving numbers. However, what I do do, I LOVE doing. Because I love it and enjoy it I have developed skills in those areas since it DOES interest me to grow a career out of it.
In school I barely passed my math classes, so yeah, my math skills are underdeveloped because of lack of interest in math. However in school I thrived in music, straight A’s. My skills are highly developed in performance art because I actually care about it. There is drive there.
When I was younger I was in and out of jobs I couldn’t stand. I also wasn’t skilled in those areas because I didn’t care. I wasn’t invested. I’m the type of person who needs incentive and a reason to be invested. Those incentives are birthed out of passion. Passions are total assets if you look at it right way. Yes, there can be busy work and other things that come up (like taxes, SEO, etc) that are not a part of your passion, but it’s a labor of love. If you TRULY love what you do, then the more challenging aspects of the job you don’t like, are worth it because you see and understand the bigger picture.
You use the example of kissing your partner as your “passion job gone wrong.” Ok, I got one coming from another passion, also on a personal level. Let’s say you have a child. It’s your dream to have a baby and raise this wonderful person in the world. Being a parent is your passion. Do you stop loving your child, raising your child, etc when they disobey? When they don’t listen? When things go wrong? No. You continue to love them and do the best as you can as a parent because you made a greater commitment. As I said, it’s a labor of love. You see beyond the challenges with your child. This is no different than running a business or having a job that is your passion.
For me personally, I would never thrive in a career I only felt lukewarm about. Maybe for some this method works for them, but not me, and I’m sure there are others like me who feel similarly. I think the better advice would be, yes do what you love. If you discover later on what you love changes, that’s ok. You can reinvent yourself at any given time in life. But it’s better to live a life knowing you stepped out to find out, rather than live in regret wondering what if? Because you never tried.
“Normalize not monetizing your hobbies.” – New bumper sticker.
We’ll add it to our Etsy shop right away. 😉