Are You Doing What You Love? (50 Famous People Show Us How)

Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle used the down time in his medical office to write detective stories. Isaac Newton worked for more than 25 years at a job in the Royal Mint, helping to prosecute counterfeiters and putting England on the gold standard.

The novelist Anthony Trollope got better at his craft only when he took on a civil service job in the post office (where he designed Britain’s famed cylindrical red post box). The same happened to William Faulkner on this side of the Atlantic: he was his most prolific as a writer when he was also a postmaster.

And who knew that Hedy Lamarr, the famous film star of the 1930s and 40s, had a passion for radio technology? Next time you’re on your cell or using Wi-Fi, give a nod to the screen siren for her pioneering work in prototypical 1G technology.

From moonlighting to daylighting

I knew little about the second lives of these people until I read the galley of the book we just published at Levenger Press, Don’t Quit Your Day Job. In today’s hardscrabble job market, the book provides a reassuring message: even if you don’t love your day job, you can often find ways to do what you love off hours.

Explains Levenger author Jack Lynch, “history is filled with famous people who held more than one job—real jobs, not honorary posts or mere recreation or low-prestige jobs abandoned for the dream job.” By day Jack teaches English at Rutgers University, where he recently made full professor—in between writing our book, along with The Lexicographer’s Dilemma.

“There is something unsettling about the great and powerful continuing to push the time clock,” Jack says. “We expect our geniuses to hide themselves away in attics and have little to do with the mundane concerns that occupy the rest of us.”

Yet Jack can tick off at least 100 well-known stars in their fields who aren’t so much moonlighters as daylighters. Some of them have loved both their jobs. Others have resented the one job, and this became added fuel that fired their true passions.

“Poetry and surety claims aren’t as unlikely a combination as they may seem,” observed Wallace Stevens. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet was a longtime and devoted employee of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. If he could find poetry amid insurance policies, that should give the rest of us confidence that we, too, can find ways to feed our passions and sustain our souls.

From dreaming to doing

The Labor Department reports that over the past couple years, Americans have started to watch more TV (2 hours, 49 minutes a day) and spend more time sleeping (8 hours, 40 minutes a day). Is there some time here that we can steal to do what we dream of?

The 50 famous achievers that Jack profiles in Don’t Quit Your Day Job—including contemporaries like playwright/politician Václav Havel and engineer/musician Tom Scholz—remind us that dreaming and doing can live together.

“Their interstitial lives invite us to think about how we might reinvent our own life, and reconcile our jobs with our passions,” says Jack.

How about you, dear reader—have you found a way to do what you love, regardless of what else you do? I’d love to hear how you do it.

Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Comments

[kurt bomze]

Though retired now from clinical pediatric dentistry, I am still occasionally lecturing
and consulting, I found a way to fulfill one of my passions-photography.I have entered juried photography shows, winning some awards. I was also given the opportunity for a few years to photograph for the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association their annual banquet. In addition I have been, for the last several years, one of the prime volunteer photographers for Komen Race for the Cure-Philadelphia Affiliate. What a joy.

[Elizabeth H. Cottrell]

The propensity for loving -- and being interested in -- lots of things can be both a blessing and a curse, but having just passed the marker of my 60th birthday, I am trying to be more discriminating. It's always a balancing act.

I have started a blog which gives me an outlet for writing creativity, and I've chosen community foundation work as the primary recipient for my non-church volunteer and philanthropic energy. These are above and beyond running my desktop publishing business and eldercare responsibilities. Life is full, to be sure.

[Rick Estep]

Before I became a quadrapledgic from a car accident, I worked a 60 hour-a-week job, and IF there was any time left for the fun things, I did them.
Now, working part-time for my church (which has its own Heavenly rewards), I MAKE time for the things I enjoy doing.
We all get only one life on this earth. What more of an incentive can you get than that to do the things you like?
Oh and Steve, I liked your "1G technology" comment about Hedy Lamarr, ha ha. Very clever!

[Charles A. Burroughs]

Taking off from Steve's first paragraph, above, John Burroughs, the East Coast naturalist (but with some time spent in Alaska at the end of the 19th century with the Harriman Expedition) did some of his best writing while employed by the Treasury Department while temporarily living in the Washington, D.C., area. He had a "stand-up" writing desk outside a large vault. His job was to "guard the money!" One of his best friends during that period was Walt Whitman, who had served as a nurse during the Civil War years. If I'm not mistaken, John had a standing invitation to the White House, also during that period of his life. He is still less well known as John Muir of the West Coast. Both were invited by Harriman to join the Alaska Expedition and both accepted. By the way, J.B. was the "scribe" for that adventure. Burroughs was known as "John of the Birds" while Muir was "John of the Mountains."

Charles A. Burroughs
Lake Jamie, Pike County, PA

[Mim Harrison]

Dear Mr. Burroughs,

That's fascinating stuff about the Harriman Expedition. It's good to give those lesser-knowns their due! Walt Whitman, by the way, is one of the 50 in our Day Job book, for exactly the job you mention here.

All best,

Mim
(editor of Levenger Press)

[First Health Medicare]

Not all of us are lucky enough to be able to do what our passions are or what we love to do. Some would think that it is only a privilege that a few can afford to enjoy, but we can always turn it around, by learning to excel and love what we do.