In Overlap, Sean talks about the importance of the day job to protect your passion: you need to cover all your bills with something that doesn’t rely on your passion so that you don’t compromise out of desperation to make ends meet.

Compromise kills passion: do enough of the kind of work you love under circumstances you hate, and one day you’ll realize you don’t have that passion anymore.

We’ve talked a lot about the dangers of the wrong day job. A bad job, that drains your energy, that you resent, but you can’t give it up because it keeps you comfortable.

But today we want to explore something a little different: what happens when you have a great day job? A job you enjoy doing, with a flexible schedule, working with people you love, making a good living… That’s the ideal situation in which to pursue your passion on the side.

Right?

In his book, Turning Pro, Stephen Pressfield describes the “Shadow Career” as a calling we pursue because we’re terrified of our true calling:

"Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies that you know you have inside you? Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk becoming an innovator yourself?"

When you have a job you love AND a passion you want to pursue, is the job a stepping-stone, a companion on the journey… or just another way to hide from the work you were really meant to be doing?