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Angela Walch's avatar

As someone who has just left academia (law prof), this post really resonates. I found that academia sucked me dry and that I did not have the bandwidth (mental, physical, emotional) to think and communicate as I wished about my interests. Am hoping to cobble together income somehow, as I don't have the 'someone else funding my life and my children's lives' option. Will be interested to see what you figure out!

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Zach Campbell's avatar

Thank you for reading and I'm glad the post resonated. I'll be curious to see where your explorations take you, too--and I've enjoying coming across your work recently and starting to learn from it! For my living the past five years, I've gone with the day job & career models I discuss, but hoping to find the time and positioning to think about how to best "bet on myself" as well.

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Just Another Film Buff's avatar

So good!

In my own (well-paying) career, I did not find any sort of synergy developing between my line of work and my interests outside it. This meant that there were no overlaps (apart from drafting emails) where I could play these two spheres of activity against each other.

But paradoxically, having a demanding career made it easier in some ways pursue what I wanted, i.e. to write, because my mind-bowl would be empty after a day's work, ready to be filled by things I was excited by.

Today, in contrast, I am "doing what I love" full-time, but the quality of attention and excitement has degraded. With the erosion of the work-passion compartmentalization, everything seems to meld into an inchoate "things to be done" list: writing an article, getting a haircut, going for a jog, fixing the leak, meeting friends, everything becomes a set of interchangeable tasks-to-do.

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Zach Campbell's avatar

Sorry for the late reply, Srikanth! I think you point out a really useful thing - that when a labor of love also becomes a kind of duty, it can have an unfortunate dulling effect. There can be a 'grass is greener' problem - those who pursue art, etc., only in their spare time envy the time and freedom of those who do it as a job, while those who do it as a job likely have a lot of constraints and expectations that don't burden the part-timer.

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