Separation of Play and Pay In The Search For Good Work

I’ve now had countless conversations that either begin or end with some iteration of “I just don’t think I’ll ever find a day job that genuinely fulfills me.” And I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

Many of us – myself included – long for what I’m calling good work. Work that fills you with excitement and passion. Work that’s intrinsically motivating, which is just a fancy way of saying work that you would do even if you didn’t get paid. Work that makes you feel like you’re actually working towards something worth working towards. And it’s not strange to think that we should be able to find good work in our day to day jobs. After all, we spend at least 8 hours each day at these jobs. Why shouldn’t they be a place we find fulfillment and excitement? How couldn’t they be the place that we find fulfillment and excitement if we’re going to spend the vast majority of our weeks – dare I say, our lives – at these jobs?

So when I hear people say “I just don’t think I’ll ever find a day job that genuinely fulfills me,” it can be disheartening. Because implicit in that statement is the reality that many of us may spend the majority of our days and the majority of our lives not doing good work. A lot of us reading this and one of us writing this spend more than a third of our day doing stuff that doesn’t make us feel alive.

But also implicit in “I just don’t think I’ll ever find a day job that genuinely fulfills me” is the idea that people are looking for fulfillment. A lot of young folk are genuinely looking for good work that can contribute to a happy and balanced life. And that, I think, is something to be hopeful about.

THE PROBLEM WITH GOOD WORK

But good work rarely pays the bills. If we’re being honest, most of us will be lucky to find good work that pays anything. And if we’re being really honest, most of us will be lucky to find good work that doesn’t actively lose us money – say like paying for a blog website that’s visited by tens of people monthly.

But we do it anyway. Because good work makes us happy. And while I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to say we’re the first generation to have hobbies and passion projects, I’ve found that a lot of young adults today have truly embraced this idea of separating good work from our day jobs.

Take me for example. There  was a time when I looked for a job that would be all things at once. A job that paid the bills and a job that brought me a deep sense of fulfillment. 

I won’t say a job like that doesn’t exist, but as of recently, I’ve leaned in to the idea that a job that does one doesn’t have to do the other. That it could actually be a good thing to have a day job to earn money and another on the side I find truly meaningful.

Now, rather than “I just don’t think I’ll ever find a day job that genuinely fulfills me ” being a reluctant acceptance of reality after the fact, it’s becoming a foundational assumption in my work life. Especially during these early years of adulthood, my day job doesn’t have to be perfect. Perhaps all it has to do – maybe all that it’s best to do –  is pay my bills and leave space in my life for the activities and pursuits that make me happy.

While I’m still conflicted as to whether this split between good work and work that pays is a good thing or the “right” thing, it does do a few important things for me worth noting.

1. It protects my play

I’ve been watching Season 2 of The Bear on Hulu these past few weeks and one of sub plot lines follows Carmy, main character and acclaimed Michelin star Chef, as he struggles with the reality that cooking isn’t fun for him anymore. The thing that presumably used to bring him joy and excitement – his “play” as researchers call it – is now his greatest source of stress and anxiety.

It’s not uncommon to hear advice like “do what you love and you’ll never work day in your life”. Well meaning though this sentiment may be, it glazes over the idea that at the end of the day, work is work. And while work isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s difficult for the economic pressures of all work to crowd out the play inherent in good work. 

It almost reminds me of what Oscar Wilde says: “To define is to limit”. 

When we define our play – cooking, making music, writing – with a noun or job title – chef, musician, author – we inherently impose the social and economic limitations of a job on something we love to do simply for the sake of doing it.

Carmy can’t just cook anymore. Now he has to be a chef that makes money, and owns a restaurant, and makes food that other people like to eat, and earns the respect of critics, and all else that comes with being a chef.

As we separate our play from our money making jobs, the joy inherent in play remains in doing and not being. We can do the things that make us happy simply because we want to do them and not because we have to. And if the opportunity comes along where we think we can maintain our play while also making money, we do it. But let’s not force it.

2. It turns the tables on our employers

Remember during COV*D when we realized that we were replaceable to our employers? When we realized that they would fire employees that have worked there for years if it meant saving a couple bucks?

That hurts a lot less when you realize that you can do the same thing.

For better or worse, when our jobs become our everything – the source of our money, the source of our play, the source of our fulfillment – it’s easy to get attached. But as employers taught us so well, when we’re just looking for something or someone that can help us pay the bills, our loyalty has limits.

That’s why we see a lot of young folk hopping from job to job like we’re afraid to catch something. Our jobs play a role in our lives, but they’re not our whole lives. So when a job stops playing that role – either by not paying what we deserve or not leaving enough space in our lives for our play – we find a new job that will. 

3. It stops my guilt

When I really started to wrestle with the reality that I wasn’t doing what I love as a job, I started to feel guilty. Guilty because I felt like I was betraying myself by not going all in and trying to make a career out of what I love to do. But also guilty because I felt like I was letting my work team down but not giving it my absolute all at work –  something I think most of us will find difficult to do for something we’re not truly passionate about. 

Admittedly, this caught me off guard. Why feel guilty just doing the job I was paid to do? Why feel guilty not going above and beyond? Why feel guilty not giving my all to a job that probably wouldn’t do the same for me?

What I think it comes down to is our genuine desire for good work. Each of us wants – maybe even needs –  work that we’re passionate about and don’t mind giving it our all for. So when we fall short of that, it weighs on us. 

Leaning into the idea that my day job doesn’t have to be that passion driven work  and that I can instead section off the work that excites me into a protected space helps alleviate this feeling of guilt that I’m not being true to my genuine search for good work. Because I am. I’m just not finding it in the place I thought it’d be. 

. . . 

In many ways, none of this is new. Few of us are strangers to dealing with disheartening jobs by doubling down on passions projects.

But now, the wave I’m seeing when I take a second to stop and look around is a group of young workers who are taking a less than ideal reality and turning it around for our benefit. As we’ve seen employers treat employees as means to their ends, we’ve decided to do the same. And if our ends is a happy and balanced life, it’s important that we find good work that both helps us make a living and helps make life worth living. Even if we don’t find them both in the same place.