Should you turn your hobby into a job? It's a tough call. I turned my hobby into a full-time gig and ended up feeling burnt out. 😄 Anyone else been there? I was a wedding decorator for a year and loved it at first, but the constant pressure to create was too much. For those who've successfully turned their passion into a paycheck, how do you do it without losing your spark?
I think you were also in a niche where people can be both frantic and demanding; add in that you likely dealt with people spending larger amounts (and the sense of entitlement that can beget), I'd wager you have some great tales of bride-zillas (or bride's-mom-zillas)...!
To survive, you'd have to get tough in a way which might be hard for a nice person to enforce; written agreements where clients have to agree to at least the main elements of a design early could be hard to insist on when brides-to-be are crying, etc.
I can imagine your BP, chance of aneurysms or heart attacks, sleep, mental health were all greatly improved by bowing out of thatmilieu!
My ex-wife used to enjoy throwing dinner parties for friends. And then a couple of them asked her to do it for them. Before I could blink our house turned in to a catering kitchen with hot boxes everywhere. She created a successful company, and then a successful restaurant and started to the doing the "celebrity chef" stuff. For her I think it was the stress that supplied the spark. And kept it going. It wasn't about the "fun" anymore. So I think looking at your passion as a job is tricky but necessary. You have to create some distance.
No. You do a hobby because you enjoy it, and if you stop, you can quit anytime. A job you have to perform regularly whether you want to or not, and it's a lot harder to quit ever.
As the saying goes, all jobs suck eventually. That's a terrible thing to have happen to something you love.
As creative freelancers we need a support group that is lacking in society. We only end up doing a thankless job. And we have to go the extra mile of doing other things as well to cover up.
I stopped doing things so as not to lose the spark in life 😀
Oh yeah...I did the same thing with a limousine business..good money but worked almosr 24/7. Be careful of whst you wish for because you probably can't handle it all. Better off working for someone else
