5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Let Passion Pay Your Bills
The phrase ‘follow your dream’ is just a plain lie, to me.
Many believe that making your passion your means of earning leads to greater longevity. Work won’t feel like work. You’d look forward to getting through those doors. It will feel like a permanent vacation. You’ll be on a permanent high.
Not true. Everyone appreciates a day off, even when the work they do is something they love.
I have always been a singer at heart. Had it not been for my mother’s persistence, I would have never done anything else. Even before school was over, I was making enough as a wedding singer.
My mother’s failed marriage forced her to be the sole earner in the family. She worked double jobs to sustain us, three girls.
This is why she motivated me to choose a concrete option to specialize in.
I made another passion — writing my career. After completing a bachelor's in English, I pursued Journalism.
Initially, luck helped me gain traction in both my talents. Until, it disappeared, and I was forced to go back to my mother’s advice.
Luck fades away with time.
“The Music Lab findings suggest that many songs (or books or movies) that go on to become hits owe much of their success to the fact that the first people to review them just happened to like them.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
It was the first Opera performed in New Delhi, India. While casually singing backstage among 80 other choral voices, the french soloist happened to hear me.
She promised me a lead role in the next Opera. I was 21 then. For the next 10 years, I continued singing with a small Opera firm in Palermo, Sicily. I traveled there thrice a year, making money on the side while keeping my main job as a journalist.
Fresh out of college, I bagged the position of copy-editor with the best news channel in Delhi. I had to edit scripts presented to me by experienced reporters for clarity and visuals. Doing this in five minutes flat was no joke.
I was demoted to a less significant post. From writing copy, I went to transcribing interviews.
I hated it and ran to do something that would pay me and give me more time to perform.
This was a ghostwriting gig. A position that paid me little but granted me a lot of unpaid time off.
Life happened. I got married to an IT geek. Soon after, we moved to the USA.
Here reality slapped me in the face. I understood that Opera singers were not just born. They were made. I had to compete with people who were better educated and less experienced.
I still had a little bit of luck. In a place home to the third-largest music school, I managed to sing as a cantor in church every weekend and get paid.
My credentials for Journalism and English weren’t recognized in this English-dominant nation. My appearance did nothing to help my cause.
From being a woman in control I became a doormat.
My husband’s contractual position was uncertain. His job expected us to be nomads frantically moving between the USA and India. With two fast-growing kids, this wasn’t sustainable.
My passions could do nothing to help our cause.
In February 2021, just before a pandemic struck the whole world, I left the USA to enter Germany and study to become a nurse.
Here, I have been working double shifts at a time when people are getting fired. I haven’t been able to make a single euro singing in a year.
The little ounce of luck I had, completely faded away.
You want your passion to remain a passion.
As a ghostwriter, I was writing my boss’s articles every day. I should have been content with what I was doing. After all, writing was something I loved.
Making writing my work meant getting up at a specific time and completing X number of articles before 5 pm. I did not have the liberty to choose my own topics.
I have also worked as an elementary school music teacher. Initially, I loved the positive energy. But with every job come rules and bad memories. As artists, we are naturally prone to reflect on them.
I did not like rushing through lessons to make way for the next class. I got bored teaching the same thing days on end. Slowly, the mishaps in the job deviated me from my sole task.
As artists, we are used to leaning on our passion to help rejuvenate after a long day. When you convert your passion to your job, you are forced to make those creative juices flow.
You perform and with each performance comes rejection or success. You learn to accept rejection. But it is the success that ruins you. It comes with a short-lived high.
It raises the bar for future performances. Meeting this high standard puts undivided pressure, slowly dissolving your passion. The very thing that once was your escape now becomes a place of detention.
If making your passion your career was all you needed, it could have stopped many greats from committing suicide.
Ernest Hemingway, a winner of the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, succumbed to his depression and sickness and shot himself.
Robin Williams, one of the best comedians of all time, could not make a joke of his struggle with Lewy body disease and killed himself.
Bantcho Bantchevsky, a Bulgarian-born American singer, singing coach, and translator, had been failing in health for some time. He jumped down from the balcony during a performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
You find no time or need to hone your skills.
An artist constantly polishes his art aiming for mastery. He carefully analyzes his weaknesses and works toward them. This requires undeterred hard work and discipline.
When you make your passion a part of your day job, you don’t have the motivation or the time to do this.
I wrote opinionated columns on politics for my boss for four long years.
Writing for eight hours a day did nothing for me. I stopped growing. My writing lacked variety and vigor, slowly acting as a natural sedative.
I danced and sang with kindergarten kids while teaching English through jovial songs. But inside, I cried.
An extempore performance revealed how much I had deteriorated as a singer. An embarrassing recording gave me a reality check.
Singing for the whole day left little desire for me to do the same when I got home. Instead of using music to pass my time, I turned to other alternatives.
When your passions start earning you your bread and butter, you find little need to invest in them.
Having talent is a blessing, but to keep it from losing its value, you need perseverance.
“Talent is an accident of genes, and a responsibility.” — Alan Rickman
You have a second career option.
Making your passion your career is not advisable, but having a skill that you could tap into in desperate times is.
In 2014, my husband's visa forced us to return to India with two kids who had never been here. They were 2 and 4 at that time.
For my son, kindergarten in the USA was all work and no play. Children his age in India were supposed to write cursive. To make matters worse, his lungs could not get used to Delhi’s polluted air.
I had gone back to my journalistic job with an erratic schedule. With two children struggling to adjust to their new environment, I had to give it up.
I loved my glamourous job as a reporter. I did not see my children as an impediment to my opportunities, until now.
At this trying time, I turned to my talent to float my boat. Music kept me from feeling completely useless when I was down in the depths.
Separating work and passion has many benefits.
The brain is a neuroplastic organ. It is hungry for change. The more your environment changes, the more stimuli it absorbs. Constant repetition makes you learn life skills for a better future.
In my first job as a copy-editor, I learned how to video edit. 15 years later, this comes in handy to help edit my own music videos.
Joblessness in America drove me to teach ESL to kids in China.
As a struggling writer in America, I attended many writers' workshops. Apart from writing skills, I gained the confidence to communicate with Americans.
This confidence helped me secure a weekly job at the local library. Here I conducted music and movement sessions for toddlers with their parents.
Through their help, I started my own dog boarding business. Cleaning up after them prepared me to do much worse as a nurse in Germany.
I stay in a small town here. No one speaks English. Thanks to the basic German I had to learn while studying Opera, I could survive.
Struggling to keep my day job and honing my talents blessed me with life skills that I continue to use in this journey of life.
It was truly worth it. Each day I look to growing this list.
Life comes around full circle.
In my 36 years of life, I have seen life come full circle. I was dragged to paths I didn't necessarily want to take, but the journey made the road less bumpy.
If you keep your profession separate from your passions you will have:
- More than just luck to bank on
- Something to look forward to after a hard day at work
- Be motivated to improve your skills
- Have a second option to exploit in dire circumstances
- Be blessed with surprises along the way that would make it all worth it.
Shireen is an avid writer, budding Opera singer, apprentice nurse in Germany, wildlife rehabilitator, dog sitter, dog walker, walker…. Jack of all trades and master of one- Mother to two children aged 7 and 9!
You may also enjoy my other stories published in ‘The Ascent’
