Don’t Quit Your Day Job

How to do what you love, without losing your shirt.

Hats off to those who “love” what they do.

Honestly, I 100% love what I do, so I consider myself a part of the auspicious clan. That is not bravado, nor is it to say that I don’t shuffle my feet. That I am immune to the urge to quit.

By now, God is deaf to my prayer that money will magically arrive like Grace: effortless and infinite. Could I not do anything, and what I dread doing just become “done”? Might I take enough trainings to avoid that ping of hope that, without taking action, things will just be “easier”? May I not ache with arthritic anxiety before each client call, buoy depression nearly every hour, and write free of the “why bother, you shitbag” track on repeat?

Don’t sound much like love does it? A bit of a Wine and Roses Romance work, it is. High in the times of bounty and low in the valleys of restriction. Kissing and making up and screaming at the screen – all in one simple 8-hour block. The best. The brightest. And the budget we run from, cheat on, and beg to come back.

What IS amour-worthy is the agency and longevity of the above relationship. We say “I do” to a vocation: we do not abstain from divorce (there is great value in quitting), but extend curiosity and patience to the rascal romance.

Example:

When the Start Up that started up my career in career and executive coaching sold, I chose to not do the reasonable thing. Taking the hand of the new owner (so generous and scared in her offer) might have been wise.

After all, I was the COO of a company successful enough to retire the founders for loads more than hoped in less than a decade. Why THE HELL would I want to be unemployed vs promoted?

Why? Well – would you believe?! – I wanted to write and serve, and I had no idea what the fuck that looked like! 

See, I had a (perhaps obtuse) love of and aptitude for language. Encouragement from my colleagues and friends had made my hot and high on the thought of “why not”?!  

Add to that affection cocktail that I had ceased to care for the “ops” aspects of running a multi-market company. What I dug, and did on weekends, too late in the evenings was connect and counsel the staff and contractors we collaborated with on how to work better. Though trained in HR, that hat was cast aside, revealing a true strategic empathy. A mirror, polished with experience and observation, on how each of the kind folks we worked with could not just be more productive, but rather more in control and career content.

We were at the close of the sale and I was nodding to investors and saying “FUCK! I want my folks”. I am losing my forum. I am going to face the dark hole of tomorrow with nary a colleague. I walked through Greenpoint crying at 1 PM harder than I had during drunken late night break up a decade plus earlier.

Relationship can be things we are thrown into. What protects passion from pricing us out comes in two phases:

1)    Identification:

Ex: How can I offer career assistance to creative thinkers and doers beyond the bounds of a single company alone?

2)    Execution:

Ex: Researching of entrepreneurial paths that might fit the bill – scratch the itch -offer the appropriate blend of boundaries and leverage to serve, learn, listen, and aide folks in career and creative infancy and evolution

HOW ROMANTIC …. 

Fuck that! It was (dare I say!) a very deft mix of brass tacks. I am a HUGE advocate of covering ones’ ass  - thus clients are encouraged to suss out the need and, if possible, necessity of any professional undertaking. HUGE focus on study here. Peer groups over lectures and webinars. Really meeting with folks in and serious about the field is paramount. Get on the ground. Let others in your desired field (creative or industrial) offer their mistakes as your education. Move slowly and be safe.

Safety is defined as vastly as the body who seeks it. Thus, be wise to establish exactly what that means for you. Is it fiscal? Ethical? Artistic? Lifestyle?

(For example, as a coach and educator, schedule is paramount -it is how the work and the domestic happens. If I do not have clarity and control, I am no good. That is a thing to know; an important part of my professional protection equation!)

The title of this article at this point may seem misleading, as I DO advise you to quit. What the ‘Don’t” is really about is the ‘how’ and the ‘when’. Both personal and professional passions are best pursued in stages. Approached with intelligence; captured with care.