Do Your Relationships Suffer Because of Your Career?

Chasing a passion is a full-time job.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo musician, a writer, a documentary filmmaker or anything in between.

Your passion may bring in some money. Or you might be doing it for free.

It’s your passion, so you’d do it for free (although you’d rather make money off of it).

The thing is, taking your passion from a spare time hobby and pushing it to your full-time form of employment is more than a little challenging.

My Passion

I went to film school.

I focused on editing and writing.

I found, much like writing, film editing allowed me to control the flow of the story.

Unlike some of my classmates though, I didn’t have much of an interest in working as grips and carrying c-stands around a sound stage.

I guess you could say I didn’t want to “work” on a film. I wanted to lay the foundation of the story itself.

The further removed from film school the more I turned to writing. Now, most of my video editing revolves around cutting YouTube beer videos.

So I write.

I write screenplays. There’s a stack of a half-dozen finished stories looking back at me on my desk.

I write long-form fiction. There’s a 400-page young adult fiction manuscript sitting on my coffee table, screaming for a fifth draft.

All of this is a passion. And all of it has affected my personal life.

When the weekend hits, I’m faced with two options: go out and do something or stay in and churn through a few more pages on the latest draft.

After workweek hours are done, I’m faced with two options: kick back and relax or comb through agent listings and tweak pitches to meet the individual submission needs.

Basically, I’m always faced with the dilemma of chasing that carrot known as my passion or kicking back, having a few drinks, and spending time with friends.

A few years back I got up and moved 2,000 miles across the country to a city I knew nothing about. The nearest relative was a six-hour drive away. I did it because I had stopped chasing my passion.

I’d become distracted.

And I knew if I didn’t do something about it I’d continue down that rabbit hole.

So I made the move away from everyone.

Basically, I cut myself off from friends and family to work.

Is that healthy? Probably not.

But I have finished up a good number of stories that had been swimming around in that mental fish tank sitting on top of my neck.

Life Always Finds a Way

As is usually the case though I ended up meeting someone.

Or, better put, I connected with someone who I vaguely knew from back home who happened to be out here as well.

We started hanging out more and more because while I wanted to focus on that passion I still needed human interaction.

However, there eventually came a tipping point.

I was at the end of a draft and I was shopping it around to agents. So most of my free time went to polishing and emailing (and searching for emails, because sometimes even finding agent contact information is a chore on its own).

She asked me how long that would take.

I told her I didn’t know.

She asked if I’d ever give up.

I said no.

She asked what would happen if nobody wanted it.

I said then I’d write another story. And another. And another. Until one found the hands and the eyes and the imagination of someone who did want it.

At that moment I realized two things.

The first is it’s impossible to explain the drive of following a creative passion to a non-creative individual.

I don’t mean that as a knock on anyone. It’s just an accountant will never understand what motivates a painter to open a gallery show.

An electrician may not understand why a chef opens a fourth restaurant when the other three failed.

An attorney may not fathom what drives a musician when every record label has said no.

For these other jobs, there are career points unlocked through education and training. You know if you put in the work you’ll graduate in a set time, obtain certification on a certain date, and move on from there.

For creative passions, it’s more open-ended. There are no clear dates or time frames. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen 20 years from now.

Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly 1 painting while he was alive. Emily Dickinson had next to nothing published until after her death. Nobody really cared about Johann Sebastian Bach until years after his death.

Basically, there’s no telling if or when that passion transforms into reality.

Which led me to the second thing I realized.

It wasn’t fair for me to lead someone along when they would always be competing for burner space with my creative drive. Especially when they couldn’t understand why I did what I did or why I’d continue to do it.

Realistically, outside of a connection with a like-minded creative on a similar mission, I don’t know if there’d be a way, at this moment in time, to have a real relationship.

After all, when a horse is chasing that carrot, it’s not focused on anything else.

When I was married I worked a good amount to save up for a house. She didn’t like that I worked that much.

I said it was to save for the down payment and then I’d slow down.

She said no, I wouldn’t. Because there’d always be something else for me to work toward.

That statement, eight years later, still has a profound effect on me.

Because maybe she’s right.

Sure, if I make it and can turn my passion into a full-time career I won’t have to spend time on an unnecessary “day job.”

But would I focused that free time on filling myself with relationships long avoided?

Or would I fill it with working on two stories instead of one?

I guess there’s only one way to find out.