I Work To Live, and You Should Too

Why we are not (and should not be) defined by our jobs.

I’m proud of my job. I work as a grant writer for a nonprofit, and my work is important to the survival of my agency. Because of the work I do, my agency can carry out its mission and help people.

For a long time, I tried to define myself by my job. I am a grant writer, I thought, a proud warrior for good who is working to help people and make something good happen in this cold, bleak world. I am defined by the work that I do to better my city and the people in it.

This, I have come to realize, was both unhealthy for me and quite a bit of an ego trip. It is also, in large part, something I picked up from my father, who placed great emphasis on his pride in the work that I do. My sister also works at a nonprofit, and he always said that he loved that his kids were charity-minded and that he would always brag about us to his colleagues and friends.

In retrospect, it was also an ego trip for him. Go figure.

I’ve since come to realize that I am not defined by my job or the work that I do. My job is just that: a job. I put in my time, including overtime if I need to, then I stop working and start taking time for myself. I have always implemented a strong line between work and home life (the fabled “work-life balance”), and I am happy that I set those boundaries early in my life. I do not intend to make my work the focal point of my life.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my job, or that I’m not proud of what I do. I know I do good work, and I’m proud to work for the great good. On top of that, I actually enjoy my job, so it’s not (usually) a slog to get through the workday. All things considered, I’m lucky to have a job that I love, because so many people hate their jobs.

Honestly, we’ve taken a hard swing from “working 9–5 and coming home to relax on the weekend” to “hustle hustle hustle.” These days, we constantly hear stories about turning your hobby into a hustle and working 80 hours a week to bring home the big bucks. If you’re not getting paid for something you’re good at, the refrain goes, then why bother?

That is accentuated by the feel-good advice of “do what you love and the money will follow.” I heard that one quite a bit in college, mostly from my dad. Obviously, you should take something you love and make it a career, or at least a side-hustle. Gotta monetize yourself somehow, why not monetize your passions?

All of this is bad advice, or at least advice that doesn’t fit many people. I have friends who have turned their passions into jobs, making their chosen craft and selling it to anyone who will buy it. And yet, for every Etsy success story, countless others spend their weekends working craft shows and farmer’s markets, lugging heavy boxes and setting up their stall, only to break it down ten hours later, only to just scrape by. I’ve worked some of those shows for my crafty friends, and it’s not easy, even for me as a (at the time) 20-something with a good back.

So, doing what you love doesn’t mean that the money will follow. Making craft soap is fantastic if you love it, but unless you have some sort of viral moment, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to survive doing it.

But, you might ask, what about other hobbies that are more lucrative, like writing? Honestly, it’s hit or miss. I am a perfect example of this — I write for a day job, I write here for a side hustle, and I’ve taken freelance jobs elsewhere. And yet, I make a good living and don’t hate it. Why am I not including people like myself?

Well, there aren’t as many of us as it may seem. I have another friend who loves writing and went into freelance writing as a career. At this point in her life, she’s burnt out on writing and is struggling to get back into it. The pandemic put her out of work and onto unemployment, which gave her a much-needed break, and she’s been trying to kick-start her love of writing again by writing stuff that she wants to write, not what a client wants her to write.

The truth is that plenty of people who turn a hobby they love into a job wind up with a job they hate and one less hobby. When a thing that you enjoy suddenly has structure and requirements and performance reviews hanging on it, it starts to get less fun.

For many people, hobbies are supposed to be unstructured, things you do when you feel like doing something you enjoy. I carve spoons sometimes and play the ukulele other times, but I don’t put any requirements onto those hobbies, and I’m not terribly great at either.

Therein lies another pitfall of making a hobby into a job: you aren’t required to be good at hobbies. Countless people write or draw as a hobby, and many of them aren’t any good at it and likely never will be. That doesn’t necessarily stop them, because it’s a hobby, and there are no requirements to be good at it.

On the other hand, if you’ve spent ten years writing fanfiction, you can’t necessarily turn that into a writing career if you aren’t good at writing. Fanfiction.net doesn’t have quality standards, but your supervisor will.

(Please save your Twilight/50 Shades of Grey jokes for another time, thanks.)

So, if doing what you love doesn’t always work, and turning a hobby into a job doesn’t always work, what’s left?

How about just doing your job and working for the weekend?

These days, people scoff at the premise of doing a job just for a paycheck. Why bother doing it if all you get out of it is money? Well, for many people, the money allows them to do the things that they do enjoy.

Maybe you collect miniatures, or have a video game habit, or like uranium glass, or dolls, or Christmas decorations. Perhaps you find value and enjoyment in getting the latest board game and playing it with friends every Friday. Or, maybe you like to cook with fancy ingredients, or you’re a cosplayer, or you like to travel the world.

There is no shame in working a job that you only tolerate because the money’s good. Your job is not your whole life, nor does it define you. You are more complicated than your job title. When someone asks you what you do, you don’t have to reply “I’m an accountant.” You could say “I’m a world traveler, a cosplayer, a woodworker, a guy who collects skull-themed stuff, an amateur cook, a cat lover, and a gamer. Oh yeah, I work as an accountant too.”

I feel like we, as a society, place too much emphasis on work. What we do for work is more important than nearly any other facet of who we are as a person, at least as far as society is concerned. That sucks. I am more complicated, more interesting, and more multifaceted than my job title suggests.

I am in a position where I love my job, but I won’t do anything for it. I won’t sacrifice my weekends or evenings, I take all of my vacation time, and when the workday is over, I don’t look at work stuff until the next workday, even (and especially) if that next workday is two weeks away.

We are all replaceable within our organizations. Some of us are more replaceable than others, of course — grant writing as a field isn’t very big — but every single one of us could leave our jobs tomorrow and they’d be able to replace us, at every level of every organization.

(That said, the current labor shortage seems to indicate otherwise, but that’s more a function of poor wages than anything else. There are limits to what someone will do for a paycheck when that paycheck is terrible.)

So, that being said, don’t feel bad if you don’t like your job, or only tolerate it because it supports your hobbies. Don’t let yourself be defined by your job title, and don’t let that title burden you with sadness or shame if it isn’t suitably impressive.

Similarly, don’t jump to make something you love into your job, and if you do, make sure you have an exit strategy in case you come to hate it. And, if you do turn a hobby into a job, be prepared for it to not be successful. You may find success later, but there’s a pretty good chance you will just barely get by, if at all. If that does happen, there’s no shame in working a retail job to support yourself while you sell quilts on the side.

Finally, remember that you are never as simple as your job title suggests. You are so much more. You are a complex person with hobbies and hopes and wants and dreams. You can define yourself however you want.

So, next time somebody at a party (whenever the plague has lifted) asks you what you do, tell them about your interest in reptiles, or the crochet stitch you learned recently, or how you play the bass and have a weekly jam session with some friends. Honestly, I’d rather hear about your D&D character than whatever it is you do for a living any day.