By Brendan O’Meara
Oh, and another thing about Day Jobs: They create structure, and they take pressure off your art. [The End of Job Shaming Part I]
Let’s address the first one. Say you work 32-40 hours per week, there’s likely a chance that you’ll have one to two hours before your shift or one to two hours after your shift to do your thing. Then there’s your days off.
Some of my best reporting was done during lunch breaks while landscaping (phone interviews). I often said to myself, well, my heroes in narrative journalism aren’t landscaping and doing reporting calls during lunch in 100-degree heat, but, alas, my path is my path and, you know what, it’s sorta cool.
I think people think that if they had all day to do their art they’d get more done. I don’t know if that’s true. The structure and time constraint enforced by a Day Job puts greater focus on the time you have. There’s a chance you do better, more concentrated work when that time is more precious.
To the second point: If you’re relying on your art to be your breadwinning you will find that something about your art dies with it. It certainly changes tenor. Not to mention that because you’re self-employed you’ll be paying nearly double the taxes, so you’ll have to churn out double the work or somehow find very well paying clients or markets.
See Day Jobs as something that pays you an advance on your work that you don’t have to earn back.
