Quitting your job to chase your passion is a terrible idea (right now)

At some point in your creative journey, you may be tempted to go all-in, quit your job, and chase your passion.

I can tell you from personal experience that this is a terrible idea.

Allow me to explain.

Back when I was working in the media, I decided to take advantage of a buyout that my work was offering to reduce staff.

I did this for a few reasons:

1. I always hated being a journalist. It was one of those things that I fell into, turned out to be really good at, and then couldn’t escape.

2. I didn’t love the direction my company was going in.

3. I had young kids at home, and this was a chance to spend more time with them while getting paid (temporarily) to do it.

I had also always dreamed of starting my own business, and getting a year of pay while I pursued that seemed like a great deal.

But it was a trap.

Image by Gracini Studios from Pixabay

Hating your passion

I took care of my two-year-old son and started chipping away at writing, building web sites, marketing, developing my social media presence.

And you know what?

I hated it.

It wasn’t the work — though I did realize in retrospect that leaving traditional journalism just to do it for myself didn’t make me like it any more — it was the pressure.

The problem with quitting your job to chase your own dream is that it has to work.

I was effectively on a one-year timeline to make my business work as a full-time income, and the pressure of that was crushing.

I had a family, a house, and all the related overhead expenses that come with it.

Fiddling around with my passion projects was not going to pay the bills when the money stopped coming in from my job.

Succeed, then quit

I’m in the perfect situation now. I did wind up going back to work and now generate more than enough income from my job to help support my family.

Over time, I circled back to the one above-average, valuable skill that I do have: writing.

Now, as my side income is set to surpass the four-figure mark in my fourth month, I can actually enjoy it.

Without my job, $1,000 would have meant nothing considering the overhead costs of my life.

Now? Now it’s inspiring, it’s encouraging, it’s fun.

That’s because, even if it went away tomorrow, I’d still be OK.

Would I like to do it full-time and quit my job? Absolutely!

But it’s impossible to work efficiently as a creative person if you’re worried about how you’re going to make rent or pay for dinner.

So if you’re considering pursuing your passion, take my advice: Get a job. Feed yourself. Put a roof over your head first.

Then you’ll have the mental bandwidth to pursue your passion until, hopefully one day, the income from that surpasses that of your 9-to-5 and makes chasing your dreams a more realistic endeavor.

This post is republished from my Medium publication.

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