The Artist & the dreaded Day Job
The challenges and the blessings of having a Day Job in combination with creating
I was going to start writing a new Habitual Creator post and assignment, but I changed my mind. That post and assignment will come - this post just kind of shouted louder that it wanted to get out in the world first 😉
This post is going to be a reflection on something that many an artist that I’ve met and coached - myself included since I both self-coach myself and have coaches I work with myself too - are having a complicated relationship with.
It’s the dreaded Day Job.
Yes, I’m actually gonna spell Day Job with capital D and J, because so often it’s such a hot topic and big dilemma for so many of us artists.
We despise the Day Job because it robs us of our time and energy, those precious resources we’d like to allocate to creating.
We bless the Day Job because it provides us with a steady income and some peace of mind when it comes to finances, something that’s not always a given if we live the life of a freelance artist.
We feel shame over the Day Job, and our Inner Critic relentlessly uses it as proof of us “not being real artists”, of us having “failed” as artists - since the Inner Critic resonates that “a real artist makes their money from their art and doesn’t need a day job”. (Which is B.S, because there are plenty of real artists who make art and earn money from other income streams too besides their art - including Day Jobs of various sorts).
We talk bad about the Day Job. We call it a Survival Job. “Not the job I want to have, but the job I need in order to survive”. (More about that later on, because this mindset is actually not necessarily that helpful..!)
…and also:
We enjoy the Day Job, because it gives us routines and colleagues and community, something that might be lacking in our oftentimes self-managed freelance lives, and because it - depending on the type of Day Job - might give us the possibility to make use of our creative gifts, talents and interests. Not everything about the Day Job is necessarily bad!
I know plenty of artists who love their Day Jobs. And yet, the struggle with the time and energy aspects is real.
Our Day Jobs come in many different forms:
Working in an office
Working as a security officer at the airport
Working in a café
Working as a bus driver
Working in a store
Teaching in a school
Teaching in a community arts school
Teaching in a university
Teaching or coaching privately
…these are just some of the types of Day Jobs artists I know or I’ve coached have had, or currently have.
One of my artist friends even refers to writing grant applications for her artistic projects as a Day Job. Yes, if you wanna be a full-time artist, that money for all those artistic projects & creative work has gotta come in from somewhere, and your grant applications are not magically going to write themselves! So perhaps writing grant applications could almost be seen like a Day Job in disguise 🥸
Last year, when I did my big life change and relocated to Finland after two decades away, I decided to do a temporary return back to my old job as a music teacher and took a Day Job. Temporary, because the job I took was a maternity leave replacement, and also because I really had no idea what it would be like to return to school after more than 2 decades away.
It’s not like I haven’t had Day Jobs before. I’ve had plenty of Day Jobs, in different shapes and forms! I’ve had teaching jobs at the University of the Arts, at theater schools, at music schools, and at an elementary school. I’ve also had a Day Job as an independent voice teacher and coach, and I’ve had more freelance Day Jobs than I can count with my 10 fingers. What was different this time was that this Day Job as a music teacher was full-time. It wasn’t a part-time Day Job in combination with freelance work, and it wasn’t multiple part-time freelance Day Jobs adding up to the equivalent of a full-time Day Job. It was one full-time Day Job. The most ordinary thing in the world! Yet it was the most unusual thing for me. Mentioning to anyone that I took on a full-time Day Job seemed almost like doing the unthinkable, because everyone who knows me well knows that my soul has Wanderlust etched on it, and freedom is one of my biggest personal values. So what happened? Had I abandoned myself completely? How could I be talking about alignment and say yes to a full-time Day Job if my biggest personal value was freedom?
I had just spent six months living out of a suitcase, trying out a semi-nomadic lifestyle and doing all my coaching & teaching work online. The Day Job that I was having at that time was working in my own business: teaching and coaching entirely online. I did love many aspects of the freedom that came with that lifestyle. I enjoyed seeing my students & clients, and I loved working in my own coaching practice / business. This was what I once thought I had wanted: a business that was operating entirely online. But at the same time, I started feeling that my life was narrowed into one room - the same room in which I also was supposed to eat and relax, which made the borders between what was work and what was life very blurry. My eyes and my back also didn’t enjoy the amount of screen time and sitting - yes, I had the freedom of taking long walks in the middle of the day if I wanted, but I still spent horrendous amounts of time at the computer or on screens. And being a single person, I started feeling quite isolated in my little “online bubble”, wondering if that really was the best and only option for me right now. I had enjoyed my online teaching & coaching work until then - but what I hadn’t considered was that my online work had come in combination with other work which included seeing people in real life…until I decided to become semi-nomadic and move countries. Suddenly my entire professional life was taking place online, and I began questioning how much I actually enjoyed it. I was finding out that being largely location-independent when it comes to work was something I did enjoy, but being entirely full-time online with my work was actually not what I enjoyed - which is why I’m glad I did try it out 😊
By the time I knew I wanted to end my suitcase life, move to Finland and settle in Helsinki (at least for the time being), I began pondering whether I wanted to combine my online coaching work with a part-time job, or whether I wanted to take a sabbatical from my coaching work to fully allow myself time to settle in my “new life”. I was starting to get back parts of my creative energy that had been somehow snowed under by life in the aftermath of that historical year of 2020 when the world turned upside down. My creativity had started flowing again, and I could feel an urgency to somehow “complete the creative healing process” that I felt I was in. I needed to “walk the talk” and I needed to support myself so that I could continue supporting others. I felt like I wanted to be focused completely on my new life in Helsinki, and allow myself the time to settle in, instead of rushing into starting a new business in my new place of residence. So the decision was made: I was taking a sabbatical from my coaching work, and took on a Day Job as a music teacher.
So, what has it been like, having a Day Job and attempting to create despite of it? It’s been many things.
I’ve loved the possibilities it’s given me to be focused on myself and my own creativity (I know it sounds really selfish, but I think being “selfish” in a healthy way is needed when you’re going through big life changes, like moving countries…and I also think an artist and creative needs to be “selfish” at times in order to create, especially if you’re planning on creating in the middle of life and not just “when the circumstances are right”). Because I had only one job, a Day Job with a steady salary and steady weekly hours (as opposed to multiple freelance jobs), I was able to spend all my free time on my creativity, my well-being and my social life. Last winter, I found myself pursuing certain creative passions and interests of mine again since a very long time, I started playing instruments I haven’t played in a long time, I took painting classes and theater clownery courses and started playing in the Bateria (the percussion section) of a samba school. All sorts of things I told myself “I haven’t got the time for” when I was a freelancer (because the truth is: as a freelancer, I was more or less “always working”).
I’ve even enjoyed certain routines that comes with having a Day Job (although I never thought I’d say this! LOL). It’s not like I never had any routines - of course you have routines also as a freelancer…but still, it’s different. There’s something very different between freelance routines - or from living a professional life that’s a combination of independent teaching, part-time Day Job and performing for example - and a Day Job where you’re going to the same place and seeing the same people, every week at the exact same time. It can be strangely…grounding, in some way. And I’m gonna be really honest: at times, I’ve hated those routines and felt like the oddball who can’t get used to “normal life”. (I’m full of contradictions, I know 😂).
At times, it was tough like hell. I’ve also experienced what it’s like to be so tired - on all levels: physically, mentally and emotionally - that all you want to do when you come home is crash down in your couch and turn on Netflix. That feeling when all your brain cells have been spent on the Day Job and there’s nothing left for creating. This is horrible for an artist, because not only do you feel drained, you also feel bad about not creating. And not creating can feel like you’re literally dying on the inside..!! This is what makes an artist who’s tired from a Day Job different from a non-artist who’s tired from a Day Job. The non-artist doesn’t feel they’re dying on the inside because they’re too tired to create and have spent too many brain cells on their Day Job to be able to produce any decent creative work.
But it was also through the tough times that I realised creating can have many functions. Your creative practice doesn’t always need to lead to an end goal, like a finished product or performance. Sometimes - especially if your brain cells have been spent on the Day Job - your creative practice can become like a mindfulness practice instead. (I talked more about this experience in this podcast episode). This still doesn’t take away the artist’s need to also create deeply. Not all of your creative practice can be a mindfulness practice, at least not if you’re having some tangible creative goals. So when do you do this deep creating if your brain cells are spent on your Day Job?
You can get up earlier. This has worked for so many creatives: the busy mom who wants to get her novel written, the full-time college professor who wants to start his own business, the independent music teacher who wants to release an album with their own songs. I too, joined the 5-5:30 am club and went to my creative practice right after I had my first cup of coffee. It’s been working well for me, but I’m not entirely sure I can keep up with it for the entire winter, because Finnish winter is dark and I learned last winter that I need more sleep during Finnish winter than I need during the summer. Some form of hibernation, if you may 😉
You can do some restorative thing after your Day Job, and then create for a couple of hours (or whatever time you can block off for that) in the evening with a fresher mind. Things that help me restore from the Day Job are a decent meal, or a walk in the forest or by the sea, for example. Certain types of restorative activities aren’t the best for me in combination with creating afterwards, though! On days when I do Yin Yoga with a sound bath or go to the swimming pool and relax in the sauna after work, I usually don’t get any creating done afterwards (I get too relaxed). But hey, you might be different! So yes, it is possible to create in the evening after your Day Job…but it comes with a downside though: I sometimes get so much in flow that I find it hard to stop. And that’s a problem if you do have to get up to teach the next morning…because nobody can get away with too little sleep for very long.
You can also learn to create a little bit everywhere. I wrote some about it here. And after one of my fellow Creativity Coach training participants told us about a certain Japanese female writer, I decided I can never ever again say “I don’t have time to create”..! Yosano Akiko (7 December 1878 – 29 May 1942) was previously unknown to me, she’s thought to have written between about 50,000 so-called tanka poems, about 500 poems in modern style, published some 75 books - including poetry but also more essays and literary critics - and translations of Japanese classical literature into modern Japanese. She also fought for women’s rights and established the Bunka Gakuin School for Girls. And this all while being a mother to 11 children (and having given birth to 13)…! I can’t imagine she was only creating “when the circumstances were perfect”.
These are just some ideas, based on my own trial and error experiences. I’d love to hear what works especially well for you too.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about how we artists tend to talk about “Survival Jobs”, and how using that term is actually some really negative energy around the word “Job”...! The word “survive” comes with so much heaviness - it’s so far from “thriving” and not even close to “enjoying”…can you be enjoying what you do if (in your mind) you’re busy surviving? The more we consider the Day Job a Survival Job, the more negative the energy gets and the more we start feeling like we’re living in an unfair world where we’re forced to do something we don’t wanna do, in order to pay our bills...when all we actually would like to do is create. But if we look into the energetics of things, we can learn that this negative energy actually creates even more resistance around our situation as it is, and it actually even blocks the inflow of abundance into your life - because your entire focus is on how much you dislike the Day Job you call your “Survival Job” and how much you’d rather be somewhere else. Calling a job a “Survival Job” also puts you in the role of a victim, mentally. You can change a whole lot in your current situation if you change your mindset from victim to conscious creator of your life. How about thanking your Day Job for the possibilities it brings you, instead of being focused on complaining about all the things you don’t like about it? That’s empowering. And transformational. I know I’ve used the term “Survival Job” myself too in the past, but the more I’ve been contemplating the effect that term has on your energy and mindset, I’ve decided I’ll never use that term again when talking about a Day Job - any job, really!
I’m grateful for the Day Job I had for many reasons, including the many insights I’ve gotten through the good and the challenging things related to combining a Day Job with creating. They teach me very much about myself, my creativity, my energy, my vision, and so much more. As much as I value freedom, I also valued the insights and possibilities this Day Job gave me in this new start here in Finland.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on being an artist, creating, and having a Day Job! You can share your Day Job thoughts and experiences with me here in the comments or in the Subscriber Chat - or if that feels like to much work (pun intended 😉), I’m sure we’ll connect in one way or the other when the time is right. ❤️
Much love,
Katja