1. There is a benefit to a day job
2. You will have multiple late nights
3. Some benefits are worth more than the paycheck

For the budding artist, there seems to be a dreading of the term “Day job.” It’s poison. You may be working on your startup or finally getting paid and recognized for your art but there is that nagging fact that you still wake up and clock in somewhere else during normal business hours.

I think day jobs are the most wonderful things to happen to creative spirits

Day jobs are a necessary evil but they give us opportunities that you wouldn’t normally have had. When we run headlong into your startup you gain valuable knowledge, of that I’m certain. However, slowing things down with a side job can help you in unexpected ways as well.

The ability to be able to safely pay your rent is one of the clear advantages to having a day job because Maslow assures us that we won’t be able to worry about being the best human we can possibly be if we don’t have a rough over our head and food in our tummies. However, with this sustained resource flow for our livelihood, we gain the ability to treat all startup funds like disposable income. With disposable income, we can splurge on that new Adobe software, we can save up for that new camera, and most imporantly, we can gather new subject matter and materials for our craft. With my photography, having a day job helped me to buy my flash, which opened up club work for me. From there, the disposable income I got helped to buy the gundam models that I am now working on using to practice different scenarios and how to focus and use different cameras for different jobs from my iPhone to my Canon Rebel. Had I not had a day job and searched high and low for photography gigs to keep the lights on, I would never have the freedom to explore new parts of the state, save up for gear, or even discover side projects that I could plan and execute on my own.

Having a day job is usually loathed by those starting out because they mean putting your passion off until the afternoons and times you would “relax” from your day job. The fact of the matter is that this line of thinking is false from the getgo. There will always be late nights. A passion is something that eats up at you. If your passion or startup doesn’t have you pacing at 3 AM with an idea that it may just be a hobby. This is not to downplay the importance of hobbies, but a passionate founder will have 3 AM idea bursts whether they are betting it all on the startup or having a stable day job as well. The photo above was actually a byproduct of a sleepless night. When the band Savoy was playing in South Florida I found myself pacing in Tampa wondering how I would get to be able to shoot their show. An entire month before the show even came to South Florida, I had sent an E-mail asking to take their photos. After getting it confirmed, asking my professors for a few extra days to make the drive from Tallahassee to Ft. Lauderdale and back again, I still found myself up at 5 in the morning editing photos when I had to drive back the next day. Any passionate startup will have late nights, whether you start working on it late or not because of a day job does not matter.

A day job can be miserable if you don’t have a way to link it to your passion. In the 21st century, everything is connected. When even Chipotle has an app, you know that there is a great idea for any job just waiting to be dreamed of. The company I work for currently, PATLive, helps to reach the goals I have for my startup by seeing them at work at an already profitable job. Customer service, crucial for securing more photography contracts, is the keystone of my position there. More importantly, the company allows for freedom of communication between parts of the company. If I have an IT question I can simply contact somebody there and learn something new. These types of intangibles are priceless for a driven creator. Even better, some of these benefits can work greatly in your favore. PATLive has free coffee. With point two of the manifesto proclaiming that late nights are guaranteed, it’s nice to know that I have free coffee waiting at my day job. A quick fix every day that I work helps to decrease my spending on coffee, and keeps my energy high so I can focus on not only my job, but how to implement the culture and success they have, into my own ventures in other areas.

Coffee Over Everything: while paychecks and a roof over our head is essential to creating in a healthy manner, the intangibles of a day job are what can help an artist flourish. From free coffee, to seeing successful models of business at work, choosing a day job can no longer be a life prison sentence to your 9-5 monotony. Instead, it can be the supplemental material to your startup that conveniently pays the bills until your product can safely do the same for you. No rush to force money into an unfinished system, and a readily available source of inspiration material. Don’t forget the coffee.