- 03 Nov, 2025 *
Last modified 1 month, 4 weeks ago.
The woes of working a day job have made for great writing and television, from the short story Bartleby, the Scrivner in 1853, to the movie Office Space in 1999. (I recommend the latter, but not the former so much, by the way).
Heck, I remember once, while at a personal-development event, the teacher said, ‘If you want to kill someone, have them work a job for thirty years.’
I was feeling something like a slow death happening to me then, too. I had a rough day job. I really disliked it.
But I’ve softened my view on day jobs considerably since, though.
Actually, a day job can save your soul. Well… your creative soul, that is.
If you have a creative vocation, like being an artist, musician, actor, or in my case, …
- 03 Nov, 2025 *
Last modified 1 month, 4 weeks ago.
The woes of working a day job have made for great writing and television, from the short story Bartleby, the Scrivner in 1853, to the movie Office Space in 1999. (I recommend the latter, but not the former so much, by the way).
Heck, I remember once, while at a personal-development event, the teacher said, ‘If you want to kill someone, have them work a job for thirty years.’
I was feeling something like a slow death happening to me then, too. I had a rough day job. I really disliked it.
But I’ve softened my view on day jobs considerably since, though.
Actually, a day job can save your soul. Well… your creative soul, that is.
If you have a creative vocation, like being an artist, musician, actor, or in my case, a fitness professional, a day job can allow you to preserve the integrity and quality of your creative endeavors.
There is a catch, though. Find a day job that’s tolerable, with reasonable hours and good pay. It’s possible, but specific education or training is likely required.
Then it’d be possible to do your creative vocation in parallel to the work that provides you stability.
I didn’t invent this concept or pioneer its practice. I thank Derek Siver’s book Hell Yeah Or No (p.89-91) and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile (p.163-5) for articulating this professional strategy. (I don’t get paid for recommending those).
It’s allowing me to preserve the creative soul of the vocation I’m most passionate about.
That’s extremely important to me.
For the longest time, I defined part of the success of being a fitness professional as being able to make a living solely through working in fitness. But after having worked at gyms across the country, met countless fitness professionals, as well as having bought a fair share of coaching and training myself, I see that that should not be a requirement for success whatsoever.
Almost all of the fitness professionals that I have met, that rely solely on fitness for their income, have to significantly compromise their services and products. I’ve seen coaches bare through frustrating tasks, like babysitting unmotivated clients who don’t mind wasting money on unproductive coaching sessions. There are grey areas. I know. Some compromise is natural. But coaches know when they’re just stringing a client along who’s kidding themselves.
Some fitness pros resort to downright wrongdoing, too, like manipulating and lying to clients. (It gets worse, but I’ll stop there).
I love health & fitness too much to use it unethically to make a buck. By the way, the primary ethic is to never do something to someone that you would not want done to you. (What Taleb calls “The Silver Rule”).
I had to redefine fitness-profession success, though. I thank people wiser and more experienced than myself for shining a light on a fulfilling and effective way to do that.
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