No, not a creepy question. :) Actually it ties into a question I get ALL THE TIME (mostly from RL peeps), which is, “Why don’t you do costuming professionally?”
First to answer your question, I’m in charge of payroll at a national IT company, which involves more things than I want to bother listing out. Though they all boil down to me sitting in an office and staring at a computer for 8 hours a day. A lot of creative type people might consider this dull, soul-sucking work, but honestly I don’t find that. I like my company and work with a lot of really great people. Work isn’t always fun, but I never hate it or wish I were doing something else.
So why do I do this instead of something “creative”?
Bottom line: it pays the bills. I make enough money to support the kind of lifestyle I want, which includes a lot of travel and living in the neighborhood I want to live in. It was an easy field to get into, there are lots of jobs, and I didn’t have to struggle for years to climb up any hierarchy to get to where I am. It’s stable and I don’t have to worry about what’s coming up next.
But more than that, I prefer to keep work and hobbies separate. I do costuming because I love it. I make what I want, when I want, for no reason other than because I feel like it. I don’t want to risk ruining that love by having to work for somebody else, and I don’t want to risk turning something I love into a burden. Sometimes I take months off of costuming because I just don’t have the interest, and if somebody else were forcing me to work on shit I didn’t want to work on? I know I’d start to resent it.
To illustrate: when I was a kid my aunt had a boyfriend who was a part-time musician and he was SO COOL because he had a basement full of electric guitars. (Aw yeah.) All us kids thought he must be a rock star, but it turns out… he worked for the local power company. He said the job was just a job, but it paid well and he always had enough money to spend on his music when he wanted to. He was passionate about music. He was not passionate about reading electric meters. But reading electric meters paid for the music and let him own a house with a basement full of electric guitars and all kinds of other awesome stuff.
I’m not passionate about payroll. But I can do it, and if somebody wants me to do it a certain way, I’m not going to get my panties in a twist over artistic integrity and insist on doing it my way. (‘Cause there are laws and shit about how you have to do payroll, as it turns out.) I can go to work every day, do my job, and then leave all that at the office when I go home to whatever the hell I want to do in my free time.
So kids, if you’re reading this and wondering what advice I have to give?
I’m not going to tell you not to follow your dreams, because that’s a super dick move. If you are really passionate about something and you want to do that as your career, DO IT. Just think about it realistically and prepare yourself for a rough road, because chances are you’ll have to wade through a load of shit before you get to where you want to be. But if you’re not 100% sure? If you love your hobbies but don’t know if an arts career is the right way for you to go? Think about what kind of lifestyle you want for yourself, and figure out a career path that will a) give you the financial support you need, and b) doesn’t totally suck. You don’t have to love your job. You just need something you’re content to do and that gives you the freedom to do the things you love on your own time.
Not all corporate office jobs are oppressive, freedom-crushing black holes of misery, I promise you. You just need to find the right company.
PS) Grown-ass adults spend a lot of time at the office screwing around. Like I spend a lot of time having serious discussions about Tolkien and Marvel characters, and a while back somebody was singing “What What in the Butt” in the filing area. So.
chequerootlurks
