Last week I wrote about how, during a night out with my Japanese coworkers while mildly under the influence, I revealed to one of my superiors that I wanted to be a novelist. In addition to helping me reflect on my personal goals, the episode got me thinking about the question in the title: when is it OK to talk with your coworkers about your creative goals?
I’ve written at length about how and why I’ve kept my creative goals a secret at my different Day Jobs, but there have also been times when I’ve felt comfortable telling coworkers, and even bosses, that my real goal was to be a writer. This was usually because I’d developed comfortable relationships with them, so revealing more of who I really was felt natural, and helped strengthen those relationships significantly.
There’s a few things to consider when debating whether to tell your coworkers about your creative goals, so here’s a quick list:
What’s the Situation?
There’s a WORLD of difference between talking about your creative goals in closed quarters with coworkers you know and trust vs. announcing your goals in front of an audience of strangers. After all, an introduction like “Hey everyone, I’d much rather be writing than working a crummy job like this one!” isn’t going to win you many friends.
On the contrary, if you’re talking one-on-one with a coworker in a relaxed situation where the other person’s already opened up to you, revealing your own goals in an honest way can be an excellent way to create trust, which can make both of you feel more fulfilled. Relationships are built through honesty, but being honest first requires finding the right time and place.
What Kind of Coworker(s) Are You Talking To?
The key to communication lies in knowing the person you’re talking to. Ask yourself a simple question: is this someone you can trust with your secret after-work life?
The best way to gauge this is to put out feelers: try to find out more about the person, including their own goals, how they feel about your Day Job, and whether they have other aspirations of their own. Get to know their personality, their interests, and the way they feel about the world. If you’re on the verge of getting to know a like-minded individual at work, opening up about your goals can be a great way to turn a casual coworker into a real friend.
Alternately, if you suspect you’re dealing with a person who just wants to work a job, go home to their neatly manicured lawn, and watch whatever’s on TV, you might want to keep more distance.
How Would the Rest of Your Office React if They Knew the Truth?
Rumors spread and people talk, so it’s worth considering what might happen if the person you’re telling happened to mention your goals to another coworker, who then mentioned it to another and…yeah, you know the drill.
If you have a Day Job where you risk facing judgement, prejudice, or real consequences because of your non-work-related goals, it may be worth being extra-secretive, even if the person you want to tell appears trustworthy in the moment. Sadly, this forces you to make real, tough decisions about how much you value your relationships with your coworkers vs. how much you value your job security—a position no one should ever have to be in, but one that might be (sadly) unavoidable.
The consequences of workplace gossip can be sadly all too-real: I had a friend who was working as a teacher while also doing stand-up comedy at night, and he once got called in for a special meeting with the principal after some students found some of his lewder videos on Youtube. The principal gave him a clear choice: either take down the videos and stop doing stand-up, or leave the teaching job.
My friend nodded and told the principal he’d have to quit teaching, which was no doubt one of the ballsiest moves I’ve ever heard in my life. Still, he shouldn’t have been placed in that position of having to choose, and it was unfortunate that he had to walk away from a paying job so he could keep doing what he loved.
What Kind of Relationship Are You Looking for From This Person?
Finally, ask yourself why you’re considering being open with this particular coworker, and what good things might happen as a result. Is this a person who could potentially become a better friend at work, or even outside of work? Will telling them your creative secret deepen your relationship in some way? Or, even better, could this person even serve as a contact or collaborator for your non-Day Job creative work, thus giving you a professional incentive to be honest with them as well?
When we talk honestly with people about who we really are, we open ourselves to all sorts of meaningful relationships that would otherwise remain closed if we continued to talk superficially about the same old bullshit. If you’re a person with creative goals, those goals make up a fundamental part of who you really are, and not being open about them outside of work means your coworkers might never get to know the real you.
Pretending to be someone you’re not at work can also be incredibly stressful, especially if it involves directly denying your creative endeavors in a Peter-denies-Jesus kind of way. On the flip side, having even one trusted coworker you can confide in can alleviate a lot of that stress and help improve your work-life balance.
Final Thoughts
Having a Day Job involves a LOT of decisions about what kind of image you need to project at work, both to fit in and so you can keep that sweet bill-paying cash coming in. Of course, in an ideal world we’d all be able to focus on doing the exact kind of work we wanted to be doing all the time, but in the meantime, we all have to make compromises that can sometimes involve how honest we are with the people around us.
Oh yeah, before you go…
But I Also Have a Day Job on Facebook
My Instagram where I post cool pics from Japan