Your Skills: Use Them to Best Effect

If the best part of your day job involves the skills you use, are building or can learn OTJ, figure out how those skills can do double duty by benefiting your after-hours vocation as well. Here's a list of common bread-and-butter jobs and some of the job skills you can "borrow": 

Administrative Assistant, Office Assistant & other clerical work

• Organizing time, office space & information: who doesn't need to keep up with these tasks? 
• Bookkeeping or payroll: you'll really be thankful for these skills if you start making money selling your art!.
• Phone or in-person reception skills: channel your Inner Diplomat when negotiating with agents.
• Multitasking: you may hope to avoid this when writing but you never know when you'll need it.

Sales Associate

•  "People" skills, any & all: after a day of being inundated with temperamental customers, you might be hoping that your next big life as a full time author will be people-free; however, if you're successful you'll still have to deal with agents and publicists (traditional route) or vendors and customers (DiY publishing, indie music, etc).
• Marketing and sales skills: even if you end up nabbing the best agent in town, it's likely you'll still have to do much of your own promo. Working the floor can help you hone the gift of gab you may need to be successful at author events, art openings and so on.

Restaurant, Retail or Manufacturing

• Managing your energy: if you work on your feet all day, you've probably developed various ways to manage your physical and mental energy. Consciously practicing this and noting what works will give you an edge on any hectic day.
• Cultivating patience: even  if you have no plans to try selling your screenplay, getting a grant for your community project or finding paying gigs, this will come in handy. And if you do have plans, you'll need as much patience as you can muster since most projects take time to yield results.
• Dealing with boredom: when you plateau (and we all do at some point), being able to set aside the "This isn't fun anymore" feelings and plow through your rewrite/query list/edits/tedious technical work will eventually take you to the next level.

I've left out many job types such as are in the healthcare field because I'm not familiar enough with them to write knowledgeably. But trying to pinpoint even one skill that could be useful as you pursue your dream will provide motivation to keep moving on.

Time: Planning Yours

Many working artists I've met think that they need to get into a potsition where they can quit the day job before they can maximize creative time. However, I think that each of us has more available time than we initially believe.

One simple way to get an accurate picture involves tracking how you spend time for one week. Choose a method that works for you - on paper or digitally - and tally the number of hours you spend on your various activities, including any time-fillers such as watching TV or wandering through Facebook. Numerous sources can give you more detailed instructions for this exercise, including Wishcraft and Becoming a Master Student. If you've done it correctly, the end result should be a throrough picture of the amount of time you have and where those hours fall on your schedule.

Sher suggests choosing a block of free time that you find you often spend aimlessly- for example, 2:00-4:00 p.m. on Thursdays - then cut it in half, and use that half for your project. During the other half, you get to relax or goof off. Her reason for initially scheduling only half of that time is that we all need open-ended free time, and if you get into the flow while working on your project, you may find yourself wanting to continue working rather than turning on the TV anyway!

Rather than elaborate further on general use of time, I'll move on to specific suggestions for using time for your passion or vocation during the course of your work day:

• If you're a morning person and you don't have heavy family obligations or your kids are old enough to be fairly independent, block out 30+ minutes in the morning. Use your best time of day to steam ahead.
• Figure out a way to make your commute serve your goal. If you take public transportation to work, use train/bus time to listen to a relevant recording or watch an instructional video on your phone (with headphones, of course). If you manage to get a seat, you can use commute time to map out a project plan, break it down into smaller steps and schedule those steps into the weeks ahead. And if blocking out distractions is your superpower, you could even draft a chapter of the novel or make a few sketches. If you drive, listening to a pertinent audiobook or podcast may be your only option but as long as it doesn't hinder your ability to drive safely, it's still something. If you walk or bike, you can use the exercise to clear your mind as well as take note of places along your route that could be of interest to you, such as art supply shops.
• Pinpoint steps within your project that can be completed within 15 minutes and do one during lunch break. Doing this every work day will add up to more than an hour each week.
• If you're an evening person, work on the project for 15-20 minutes after family time is over for the night and kids are in bed. If you don't have any dependents you can devote more time. If you have a spouse or domestic partner, try designating a time when you both work on whatever gives you meaning - not working together on the same thing (although if that's what you're doing, go for it) but working side by side, sort of like preschoolers' parallel play.

If you've never tried any of these things, you may be surprised at how quickly small time increments add up. 

How Your Job Can Feed Your Vocation, Passion or Art - Introduction

Once you've taken the step of either making peace with your job or finding a different one, you can begin to explore how you might use your job to feed your dream. Briefly, here are some areas to look at. I'll go into each of them in more detail later:

• The skills you use OTJ.
• The people you meet and work with - your connections.
• Your schedule.
• The location of your workplace.
• Things you can buy at discount, or other material resources.
• Your commute.
• Opportunities you encounter.
• And whatever else you can find.

Most jobs won't have ideal or even good situations in all eight categories. Your task is to figure out where the strengths of your job situation lie and how to make the most of them.

Here's one benefit of holding a day job as long as it's a reasonably good one: it gets you out in the larger world and forces you to stay sharp. I've met people who lost jobs and were able to score up to two years of unemployment benefits that paid for their needs adequately (not all benefits do) but who accomplished almost nothing in terms of building a new life or working on a long-held dream during their unemployment. My theory is that once their lives lost the daily structure a job can provide, they weren't able to work without it.

If you want to do something badly enough, you'll find ways to do it while you're still employed. Let's start by looking at how the people we've been following could make use of the obvious and not so obvious benefits from their day jobs. 

Example - Molly's Dilemma

Although Molly mostly likes her position as a special education classroom assistant, she realizes that the income will never be quite adequate. With a growing sense of dismay, she's realizing that her husband has "settled" - he's not going to look for work with better pay and more responsibility. After getting the resentment out of her system by venting to her best friend, Molly realizes that the only person she can change is herself. She really needs to get herself into a better economic position.

She's reluctant to table plans for her beading business, but she decides that right now her best move for the long term is to learn the skills that could land her an administrative assistant position in the school system. Office positions pay several dollars more per hour than she's currently earning, plus the summer break is six weeks long rather than two months. In addition, if she were ever laid off (not unusual for schools), having office skills could probably insure that she wouldn't be unemployed for long.

Molly researches her options and finds out that the community college offers a certificate program that could be completed in a year if she took online or evening classes. Or she could sign up for free e-courses in basic office software such as spreadsheets via a program offered through her library's website. An informational interview with the principal's assistant at her own school could help her decide which route is best.

After thinking it over, Molly gives herself one year, starting this fall, to complete whatever skill-building she needs, after which she'll begin applying for front office positions within the school district. Having the deadline assures her that this is a temporary detour; when the year is over, she'll return to moving full speed ahead with her crafting business.

Meanwhile, she decides that she'll stay in touch with her entrepreneurial goals by rewarding herself with several hours every weekend for doing her beadwork, with an occasional all-afternoon bead binge during school vacations on days when her mom can watch the kids. This will keep her creative dreams from withering altogether.

A Dream Deferred...but only for a while

When I've talked with friends and coworkers about the role the day job plays in their lives, one question often arises: when does it make sense to postpone a dream in order to acquire the skills or qualifications needed for a better day job?

Some jobs make it relatively easy to bring in the bread and still have energy left over for Life. But what if your day job pays minimum wage without benefits, and as a result you have to rely on public assistance to an uncomfortable degree? Or if your job leaves you so drained that, no matter how many precautions you take, by the end of the day you can't do anything but slump onto the couch and stare vacantly at the TV? Or the hours are so long (say, 7:00 am to 8:00 pm or beyond, not unheard-of in management jobs) that you literally have no time for anything else?

If you're in one of these situations, it may make sense for you to spend a predetermined length of time in a focused job search or training program. Begin by simply asking yourself whether your paying job is helping your dream, hindering it or is neutral. And if it's a hindrance, how long has this been the case? Is it always a drain or only at certain sporadic times? Have you tried all reasonable remedies?

If you like a more structured and definite approach to problem-solving, keep a small notebook with you on the job for a week or two, and jot down actual time spent, activities, income and expenses or any other factors that may be a problem. If you confirm your impression that the job itself is a problem and it's not likely to change, it may pay in the long run to set aside the novel or guitar lessons and find a new means of livelihood first.

If you're really floundering, pick up a copy of Richard Bolles' What Color is Your Parachute? and get to work. If it's easier for you to do things in groups, with feedback, see if the nearest community college offers career planning workshops.

If you decide that all you need is a skill upgrade so that you can apply for positions with higher pay, check out free or low-budget sources first. Your library system may offer its members the chance to enroll in free online courses offered by Ed2Go or some other online education site. Through the same library, you could borrow tutorial books, DVDs or download courses that teach hands-on skills such as software - the Idiot's Guide and For Dummies books are especially helpful. About.com also offers online courses where lessons are emailed to you. The local unemployment/job security office (now called WorkSource in many places) may have public computers with self-guided MS Office software tutorials.

 Bolles' book includes a skills inventory, an exercise that helps you locate specific gaps between your current skills and what is required for the job of your choice. If you're even slightly foggy about exactly what you need to learn, I strongly advise doing a skills gap assessment first; if you can pinpoint exactly what you need, you could save hundreds of dollars you would have spent on tuition for unnecessary courses.

However, be extremely careful about playing the "going back to school" card. Unless you want more formal education for its own sake, or unless the degree is an absolute requirement for doing your dream, it could be a long and expensive detour around your dreams. This is the fallback position for adults who are stuck in bad jobs, and it's often presented as the solution to career challenges: just get that extra degree and you'll have it made! Many people go back to school without checking whether they really need that additional piece of paper or if a few new skills would suffice.

As Barbara Sher notes in Wishcraft, school is a big business, with an investment in getting you enrolled in yet another degree program. If you're serious about your dream and want to get back to it ASAP, do your homework before signing away two years in school.

Finally, set a deadline for achieving your goal, whether it's finding a new position right away, picking up a few skills or completing a full program. The deadline will help you stay on track. Be very clear with yourself that this is just a short detour, one that will get you to your dream more quickly in the end.

Because that's what your double life is all about, right?

Why You Must Make Friends with Your Job

On the surface, it would seem that disliking the work you do for money would provide the best possible motivation to move on to something new. But in real life it rarely works that way. Here are some compelling reasons to make peace with what you're doing now, even if you have future plans that don't include your current job:

• When you hate something or someone in your daily life, the hate begins to color the energy field around you. Even if you don't believe in auras or invisible force fields, you've probably had the experience of feeling a sudden chill when a particular person entered the room. That's because the person was carrying around negative energy, and emotional energy has a life of its own. You owe it to yourself to keep yourself from becoming one of those people. Besides, extreme negativity is going to interfere with your ability to find and make the most of happy possibilities that will help you towards your dream.
• Once you decide to make peace with an unloved job, you actually set yourself up for a better one. In some spiritual traditions, there's a belief that you won't be sent any further opportunities until you've mastered what you're supposed to be doing now. Boy, is this a hard idea to swallow sometimes! Test it for a week if you're skeptical. Once you're able to go about most of your daily tasks cheerfully (this doesn't mean grinning all day or dancing on desks) you may find that interesting offers and opportunities start coming your way.
• Once you're at peace, you'll have more energy to spend doing what you really love. This is especially important if your paid work involves long hours and you don't have much free time. If you have a job that's bad by any standards, it's already taking up your work hours. Are you going to give it more time by allowing it to drain you so much that you have nothing left to give after you clock out? An apt metaphor for such self-sabotage is the man who arrives home one evening to find burglars loading all his furniture into a fake moving van and greets them with " Do you need any help?"
• After you've cleared away any emotional clouds hovering around you, your'e free to start mining whatever benefits your job may hold, in terms of your dream. Most jobs have something to offer. In upcoming chapters I'll offer way to find those somethings. 

Even after you befriend your job, you still might be on the lookout for something else. There are instances where you can make a bad job more bearable but if you're going to be happy in the long run, you'll need to find a more congenial day job. 

In some circumstances it makes sense to put your passion on hold for a definite amount of time while you focus on getting the training you need to enter a new field. For example, if you decide you want a position as an administrative assistant because working regular business hours will open up more passion-related opportunities than your current retail job, but your office software skills are slim to none, you will probably have to take classes. In that case, find out what you need to learn, make a learning plan and give yourself a time frame for finishing your training. Setting a deadline is extremely important; without one you might find yourself taking coursework less seriously and prolonging your training time. 

It also helps to set out visible reminders of your ultimate passion-related goal, the one you've temporarily set aside. Reminders will help you stay on track and remember why you're really slogging through Spreadsheets 101. It's not because you envision a life where setting up spreadsheets is the high point of your week, it's so you can eventually afford high quality art supplies or join a community choir that practices evenings. 

By the way, if you're still a traditionally young college student, one of the best things you can do for yourself is make sure you have an easily marketable set of direct job skills before you graduate. Even if you love Art History and are aiming for an eventual position at a museum or in academia, having office tech, sales or service skills will ensure that you won't starve while searching. 

In addition, having a "meanwhile" job will not only help pay for things, it could keep you from having to move back in with your parents. Too often, in cases where the parents haven't required much of the returning adult child, I've seen the kid in question start on a downward slide into inertia. Having a regular job gets you out into the world, makes you get moving and stay moving, and forces you to stay reasonably sharp. 

And you'll need those sharp wits for moving towards your dream.

Section II: Work Feeds Art Feeds Work

In this section I'll show how your day job can "feed" your passion or art, and vice versa. The work you love and the work that pays the bills don't have to be enemies; in fact, your whole life will run more smoothly if they make friends with each other.

I you're in a job that seems utterly bereft of redeeming qualities, you may find this hard to believe. However, I hope to convince you that trying out the practices I describe in the following chapters can only do you good, no matter how demoralizing you might find your current pay-the-bills work. This isn't to say that you shouldn't look for a new position, just that you owe it to yourself to make the best of the one you have.

If you couple this approach to your job with the Creative Jumpstart described in Section I, it's likely that you'll see changes in your quality of life immediately. These changes will initiate a synergistic process whereby every action you take on behalf of your dream will generate creative energy that spills over into your job, and every action you take to make the most of the opportunities your job presents will further your dream.

I'll start this section by showing you why you need to make friends with your day job, and how to do it.