One thing I’ve struggled with since the days when I first started working was how to present myself and my goals while at a Day Job. Should I pretend that I was totally interested in whatever work the company was paying me to do so I could take care of my bills, or should I be honest with my boss and coworkers that my real passion lay with writing and a career where I could do something creative?
Fortunately, in the days when I stocked grocery store shelves or cleaned preschool classrooms as a college student, this wasn’t a problem because everyone realized I was just doing these jobs for spare cash. They knew I was in college, that I was only doing the job part-time, and that I was majoring in an area that had nothing to do with grocery stores or janitorial work, so we were all on the same page.
The problem was, though, that after college when I went out into the world, I wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to move in, but needed Day Jobs to help me to pay my bills while I figured that out. And while I was working those jobs, people tended to regard me with suspicion, derision, or just plain view me as incompetent.
This was partly because after college I’d set out on a path that wasn’t like most straightforward career trajectories the people around me were used to, so they didn’t understand why I was working those jobs. Similarly, because I didn’t yet understand the concept of Day Jobs and how they related to my personal goals, I couldn’t explain why I was there, and chose to make up stories or excuses, usually something along the lines of “I’m taking some time to figure things out.”
Other times I pretended that whatever Day Job I had really was my career goal, usually just long enough to shut people up and stop them from asking questions.
And this went on for kind of a long time.
Being Honest About My Real Goals at My Day Job Helped Me a LOT
This all changed after I finished grad school, when I picked up work helping an agricultural research team in the greenhouses at the University of Nebraska campus. My boss and most of his team were from India, and I’d done editing work for them before, so they all knew me. They also knew that editing their manuscripts only took a few hours a week and made for a small paycheck, so it made sense to everyone that I come help in the greenhouse to fill out a 40-hour week and earn more money.
In the greenhouse I mostly worked with the agricultural grad students, who all had goals of their own: some of them wanted to be professors, and some of them wanted to work in industry. They knew I came from the English department and that I wanted to be a writer, and they all thought that was cool and were really supportive. They’d also seen my editing work and knew I was good at it, so they had an idea of my skills.
I liked that job for a lot of reasons, but one big one was that I could be myself when I was working with them, and I didn’t have to hide who I was.
Now I’m Also Honest About My Goals When I’m at My Day Job, and It’s Working Really Well
When I interviewed for the Japanese university instructor job I have now, the recruiter doing the interview asked me what my goals were. Up until that point the interview had gone ridiculously well, so I told her I’d been in Japan a while and I wanted to stay a little longer.
I also told her that I was a writer (I think I used the phrase “that’s my other job”) and had a novel coming out in the spring, which seemed to impress her, so I was able to say definitively that I only wanted to work the job for one semester. And she seemed to think that was really cool.
I also told her that I wanted to teach university English someday, preferably creative writing (which was true), and probably wanted to do it back in the States. Would teaching English-as-a-second language courses in a Japanese university for a semester help me achieve that goal? It was hard to say exactly, I speculated, but it seemed like a good chance to boost my skills and credentials.
Looking back, I think the recruiter was impressed that I had a plan, had definite goals, and knew where I was going with them. And I definitely got the job.
I was never sure whether the recruiter told my supervisors (I have 4 of them) about my being a writer, but once I actually started, it came up surprisingly naturally. On my very first week the other teachers asked me how long I wanted to stay and I told them it was only for one semester because I had a novel coming out in the spring. I don’t think they knew quite what to make of it, but at any rate, they seemed impressed.
Several weeks later one of my supervisors asked me the same question (“Are you planning on staying?”) and I gave her the same answer. She thought that was really cool, and wanted to read my novel when it came out.
As the weeks wore on and I told more and more people, I found myself able to talk about my novel-writing goals with more confidence and clarity. The more confidence I had, the more people seemed to listen.
Also, the more I told people and gauged their reactions, the more confidence I was able to muster about my goals and where I was going with my life and career, and the better I felt about everything. It’s been a huge confidence booster, and a big reason why I’m able to act more like myself when I’m at my Day Job.
Final Thoughts: Consider How Honest You Can Be at Your Day Job
Not everyone has the luxury of being honest about their creative work when they’re at their Day Jobs. The writer Jonathan Face talked to me a few years back about how no one at his programming Day Job knew about his writing, and why he’d prefer to keep it that way. He’d carved out his own identity for himself at his Day Job where he was able to feel secure in his life, his career, and his goals, and I thought that was really cool.
Others of you out there, though, might be more like me in that hiding your real goals and interests at your Day Job can be stressful and lead to embarrassing misunderstandings. As such, you might consider ways that you can tell people where your real passions lie, especially if the right opportunity comes up.
Think about the atmosphere you work in, your goals for that particular Day Job (networking, getting a promotion, getting a raise, etc.), and how sharing your creative goals might affect them. Every Day Job is different, and rather than blindly assuming yours will react with hostility or by making fun of you, it might be worthwhile to consider how being honest could make your Day Job life better.
Also—and I really should be honest about this—having some tangible proof that your creative work is going somewhere also goes a LONG way toward impressing people. In my case, having a novel coming out in the spring provides some pretty strong proof of worth, so if you’ve got some similar kind of proof, you might try using that as a starting point. (And if you don’t have any similar proof, you might try getting some!)
Or, if you’re pretty sure being honest isn’t an option, you might consider finding a new Day Job where you can be honest, especially if hiding your real passions is causing you stress. University teaching (and freelance editing) has allowed me to do that because it’s a field closer to writing, so it’s not entirely unexpected that I’d be writing novels on the side. Try seeking out other positions where a nights-and-weekends creative passion related to your Day Job isn’t necessarily a strange thing.
Or, if that’s not feasible, consider part-time work, especially part-time work that carries less of an expectation that you’re entirely devoted to that particular Day Job. How many people waiting tables in New York and Los Angeles are pursuing creative passions on the side? You could try doing something similar, regardless of where you live.
I stress this because the peace of mind that comes from being honest at your Day Job has been incredibly helpful for me—and I know it’ll be for you, too.