The late Sir James Goldsmith, billionaire financier, once said*, “When you marry your mistress, you create a job vacancy.” And this holds a lot of truth to many situations in life, amorous or not.
Something that I have discussed with great frequency is turning an aspirational position or a hobby into a career. And although the focus has been primarily on the realities of each job’s duties, one thing that I haven’t mentioned much is the potential void that it can create.
Hobbies are a form of escapism over anything else. You dive into a subject or a skill and hone that ability out of pleasure and enjoyment over financial gain. While you could professionally pursue your hobby, you choose not to, perhaps for fear of adulterating the experience or adding on stress. Or maybe you leave it as a hobby because you want it to still be fun.
The problem with this is that over time, people can get very good at their hobbies, and see that monetizing their skill is the next logical step. This then creates the vacancy mentioned in the quite above – so how does one turn a hobby into a career without making that sacrifice?
The easiest way to do it is twofold: change how you think about the hobby-turned-career, and get a new hobby.
If you keep thinking of how fun something used to be, chances are that you won’t enjoy it as much. So if you’re willing to sacrifice your hobby to make a few bucks, you’ll also have to sacrifice thinking of it as a hobby. Unfortunately, you will have to think of it as work. This is why professional athletes don’t play their sport recreationally.
You’ll also need to fill that vacancy in your schedule. You should be starting a new hobby as soon as you’ve decided to turn your old one into a career. In this way, you have time to get acquainted with your new pastime and let it fill in the hole in your schedule that the old one has created.
When you feel stifled by your career, remember that you can always look to your hobby for a relaxing escape. But when you want to turn your hobby into work, keep in mind that you’ll need to start escaping to somewhere else.
*It’s possible this was actually said by playwright Sacha Guitry, according to Wikipedia.
