What to do when your hobby IS your job (aargh!)

Ok, picture the scene. You’ve just finished a hard day of drawing pictures, and it’s the evening so time to relax. Maybe let’s go out and… draw some more pictures?

Loving what you do can be a double-edged sword.

Illustrators have meet ups and networking events where they will meet up and DO THEIR JOB together. I’d never really thought about it before but IT IS WEIRD. It’s weird.

What other profession chills out together by working? Can you imagine a room full of dentists having a poke about in each other’s mouths for a laugh? 

Or lawyers; “Haway Barry, let’s go down the pub and write up some contracts an’ that.”

No. 

And yet. Here we are. In a world where our favourite thing to do is also the thing that makes us money, the thing that is our business.

The overlap can be a tricky thing to negotiate.

You make your own boundaries

Where is the line for you? What is work and what is fun? You can draw for both, but changing what you DO with those drawings changes the feeling around it. For me, posting something online turns it into work. I can’t help it. Click share on IG and it instantly becomes work. If I keep my drawings to myself, they don’t feel like work.

Feel it out and see what works for you.

Decide what you’d like to keep back for yourself

Are there other hobbies you could take up? Probs not. That’s ok too.

On the flipside of the coin: don’t share all of your work if you don’t have to. (if you need to keep something back for you. It’s a balancing act.)

How you talk about your work changes how you approach your work.

Are you still calling it your hobby, but want it to be more?

Choose yourself!

Don’t wait to be picked. Call yourself the thing you want to be. Put it on your email signature, I DARE YOU. Share your work. Thanks to the internet the gatekeepers pretty much do not exiiiist anymore. Make the most of it! Do your thing and stop waiting for some magical outside validation.

Value your work, charge your worth, and your work will rise up to meet the challenge. Clients will value your work. It’s all psychology and mindset stuff. We could go SO DEEEEEP on this. 

Are you a hobbyist or a business owner?

Can we be both!?

(Yeah, I think so. But owning your identity as a business owner first can do AMAZING things.)