#DayJobShame Is a Real Hashtag and a Real Thing.
Day jobs, as long as they don’t suck you dry and spit you out as a brittle husk, can provide financial security, a place to rest your unconscious mind so it can create without your interference, and even inform your creative practice. Yet, a lot of creative people still experience Day Job Shame.
I’ve been scouting artists and creatives who have day jobs separate from their creative practice, to dispel this weird idea and spotlight some amazing ideas for making money outside your art.
This week’s poster child is John Green.
Before I tell you more about Green, the author of, among other things, The Fault in Our Stars, I want to clarify that day jobs aren’t required. If you’re already making sufficient money from your art, keep going.
Now back to John Green.
You can peruse all his different day jobs here.
He’s probably an outlier—I felt a bit overwhelmed (and deeply impressed) after looking through all his projects. He creates games, has a YouTube channel with thousands of subscribers, and a non-profit that raises a LOT of money for other charities (great name: The Foundation to Decrease World Suck. Not kidding). This, in addition to writing bestselling books that get made into movies.
Okay, he is an outlier. BUT. We can learn something from him.
What he’s done is create ways for people who think like him (called Nerdfighters) to hang out and do good, together.
In addition to being an outlier, John is not your standard, perfect Hollywood famous person. I ran across him talking about his new book on Fresh Air, when he mentioned, among other things, that he has OCD. The main character in his most recent book has it too, and it’s not the kind people joke about.
At the end of the podcast, Terry Gross asks him about writing full time and he says he doesn’t want to. He likes having his “day job” to go to. It helps his writing.
I’m calling your attention to him because he’s real and frank and interesting, but also to show that there are a zillion ways to fund your art. It looks like he applied his creativity and bent sense of humor (Decreasing World Suck) to create other projects. He probably didn’t necessarily think about making money with them, but he is now.
It's time to stop perpetuating these myths and let go of your Day Job Shame. Figuring out a good day job to fund your art is part of my ten-week Make Peace with Money and Marketing class. We had the FIRST session on July 9th. What a blast!
I’ll be starting a new session on August 20th at noon. Email me or schedule an appointment here to chat about whether the class would be right to help you get your creative practice up and going, or to increase the amount of money doing what you’re already doing.
In the meantime, what group of people would you like to hang with? What do they need you to lead them to? Could you start assembling them now? Let me know in the comments below.