This topic hits pretty close to home for me.
When I was 22 and just out of college, I worked a few temporary jobs and side projects, but had very little stability. I was still living at home, didn’t know where I wanted my life to go, and didn’t have any real creative goals. I spent a lot of time reading, sleeping, and meeting up with friends who were in similar boats as me now that they were out of college too. Most days it seemed like the path I’d been on for the past 17 years from kindergarten until college had flipped off the tracks and derailed. I felt stuck.
During this time I suffered from some pretty bad anxiety and depressive episodes that I had trouble talking to people about. I felt embarrassed that I was having these problems, and it really hurt knowing that several of my closest friends had left New Hampshire to find new jobs and start exciting new lives where they had plenty of spending money and didn’t have to live with their parents.
I felt like I had a lot of energy to do things, but no focus, and no idea about how to channel that energy into something productive. I had a few side gigs and was earning some money, but it wasn’t enough, and none of these ventures felt like they were going anywhere.
I look back on that time in my life and shudder, because it felt so horrible being lost.
Day Jobs Pulled Me Out of My Funk
I’d been out of college for about six months when I realized I just needed to pick something and run with it—anything that wasn’t sitting at home watching DVRed episodes of Degrassi. That thing had to bring in enough money to pay my $650 a month in student loans and help me save a bit, but more importantly, that thing had to open new doors that would lead to bigger things.
I started working as a substitute teacher at my old high school and middle school, which was an easy gig to get. The pay was minimal ($60 a day), but once I developed a reputation as being competent I started getting more work, and working 3-5 days a week brought in far more money than I was making helping people on Craigslist move their furniture.
More than the money, though, was the sense of purpose that job gave me: I had a reason to get up in the morning and get moving, and I did some sort of useful work every day that made me feel accomplished. Sure, substitute teaching was mostly just handing out worksheets and pressing play on the day’s video, but just doing something consistent was enough to pull me out of my funk.
The other thing that helped was that when I finished at 3:00 every day I still had hours of afternoon time to use productively however I wanted to. When I was stuck at home all day, of course I had more actual time, but because I felt unfocused and anxious I couldn’t use that time as well as I wanted, so a lot of it ended up wasted. Having a Day Job to go to during that first half of the day, though, put my mind in focused work mode and filled me with energy.
Eventually I picked up a second gig tutoring for a private company at a different school, and though that job kind of sucked, it was good experience, boosted my cash flow, and showed me the power of combining multiple sources of income to make a living. It was also a HUGE boost to my confidence—if I could pick up that job with my level of experience, surely I could pick up others as well.
When summer came and substitute teaching ended, I started working with my dad painting some houses he was working on, which further reinforced my Day Job philosophy. Going to a job every day where I could do a relatively mindless task that I was good at and kept me focused while bringing in a paycheck did wonders for my productivity and outlook on life, and more and more I began to realize that I too could make my way in the world one day, one week, and one Day Job at a time.
Day Job Philosophy is Powerful, But It Can Also Be a Crutch You Rely On
It’s hard to believe that time was more than 13 years ago now (!), but I’ve approached every job I’ve had since then with a similar philosophy as I began to clarify my goals of becoming a novelist and being my own boss.
The problem, though is that becoming a novelist is a LOT of work—and more importantly, it takes a LOT of time. Sure, that work can be squeezed into evenings and weekends, but doing it that way means that you either have to compromise in other areas or it takes a LOT longer to achieve your goals because you’re only working on them for 10 hours a week instead of 40.
I feel like in the back of my mind I’ve always known this. One of the very first posts I wrote on this blog was about creative people using Day Jobs as a transition into making your creative work pay so you don’t have to have that Day Job anymore, and I still believe that’s the direction I want to be moving in.
However, when it comes to actually letting go of the mental and financial stability that Day Jobs bring, it can be scary when you think about taking that plunge. I worry that I’ll sleep too late, slack off, and get distracted like I used to, or crawl along at a snail’s pace not getting anywhere. I worry I’m not good enough to build my own structure apart from the structure that having a Day Job offers.
Maybe that’s because Day Jobs have been a part of my regular routine for so long that not having one feels unfamiliar and scary. More so than that, maybe the idea of not having a Day Job brings back traumatic memories of being 22 and floundering in a miasma of self doubt because I didn’t know how to structure my own time.
I try to tell myself that this isn’t true, that I’ve come a long way since then and gotten a thousand times better at planning goals and organizing my time. I wasn’t ready to set off into the unstructured world of harnessing a creative career when I was 22, 27, or even 33, and I’m afraid that seeing myself as still not ready has become a part of the way I structure my life.
Maybe it’s never easy to take that plunge. Maybe I just have to find the confidence to believe that I’m ready, and tackle the challenges as they come.
Maybe the final piece in the Day Job puzzle is believing in yourself and the work you do.
Maybe I just need to try it.