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Special guest writer, good buddy, and occasional creative partner-in-crime, Charles Soule, has written a fantastic essay about balancing your ‘day job’ with your second, more creative life.

So, you’ve got a great day job in a very professional environment. You worked hard to get it and it pays the bills (and more.) You’d hate to lose it. Still, the fact that you consider it your “day” job means that you’re pursuing something else at the same time, probably something creative. But how to balance the two? Can you go after your true calling while not giving your day job bosses the impression that you’re not committed?

I worked for five years as an attorney at a high-pressure law firm in New York City. At the same time, I wrote… a lot, including a novel, and performed regularly with my band. It wasn’t always easy to pull off. The firm paid top dollar, and expected their attorneys to relegate all non-work aspects of their lives to second place. Still, I was serious about working towards a career in music/writing, and I didn’t want to stop. I had to devise a few strategies to make it work, which I’ve outlined below.

First and foremost, you’ll notice that I write about working towards a creative career while maintaining a professional day job as if it’s a stigma, something to hide. The sad fact is many bosses do see things that way. Employees are judged on productivity and their impact the company’s bottom line, not how many tickets their one-man show sells. Your “hobbies” compete (even if only indirectly) with the work they pay you to do, and so it’s important that you present them the right way.

Do what you’re paid to do! You may not love your day job, but you still have to do your day job. Even if on occasion it means not taking a gig, or staying up until 4 AM to finish a freelance drawing job. People at the office will resent any slacking that much more if they know you have things going on outside work that you’d rather be doing.

Who can you trust? Not to be paranoid, but if you’re working a job that’s truly “professional,” telling your co-workers, and especially your boss, that you’re seriously pursuing a creative career at the same time is one of the fastest ways for them to decide that you’re not serious about working hard in your day job. A few approaches to this issue:

Secret Identity
Be Clark Kent in your day job, and Superman outside it. Frankly, how you spend your personal time isn’t their business, as long as it doesn’t affect your work performance (remember, “Do what you’re paid to do!”) Be careful about blogs, websites and other forms of self-promotion that a co-worker might stumble upon. This is probably the safest path, except that it creates a situation where you’re being false with the people with whom you spend a large chunk of each day, which creates its own stresses. Plus, it cuts you off from a potential fanbase – your co-workers.

Choose Wisely
Once you’ve been working in a job for a little while, you might feel that you’ve made some pretty good friends, and you’ll want them to hear your demo, come to your art show, whatever. Tell them, but preface the invite by letting them know that you’d prefer that what you do in your free time doesn’t become common knowledge in the office. Chances are that the news will get out eventually, but hopefully it will take long enough that you’ve been able to sufficiently impress your colleagues with your professionalism and it will matter much less than it would if it had come out on day one.

Fly Your Freak Flag High!
Eventually, you might decide to let it all hang out. Invite the whole office to the premiere of your independent film, mail your band’s website around, etc. It’s liberating to be able to speak freely about the things you love, but be prepared for a change in how you are perceived. Your superiors will expect to see lower quality work from you than your colleagues who don’t have the same sort of “distractions” you do, and may see it whether it’s there or not. This can be an incredibly frustrating situation, so be careful. Once the cat’s out of the bag, it’s not going back in.

So about that cat… how do you handle it? Figure out a way to make things work for you. That may be as simple as accepting that your co-workers might get promoted more quickly, or get bonuses you feel you’re equally entitled to. Think of it as a sacrifice you’re making in order to pursue your art. Or, you could do what I did – stick things out for a while, and then transition to a situation where you can use the skills you learned at the day job to continue supporting yourself while you free up time for the creative stuff. I left the law firm, started my own small practice, and now I work as much as I need to pay the bills and spend the rest of my time on writing or music.

The important thing is not to let the man get you down. After all, it’s not like your day job is your career, right? It’s just temporary, until that painting/script/novel/CD sells!

Charles Soule has lived and worked in New York City for the past ten years. He’s a writer of novels (regular ­and graphic) and screenplays, a composer (www.soulemusic.com) and gigs regularly with his rock band and his jazz trio. In his spare time, he runs an immigration and corporate law practice.