How to Keep Your Dreams and Your Day Job

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In the struggle to integrate work with a meaningful, fun, and fulfilling life, many of us find our big dreams colliding with our occupational realities. As much as we'd like to be starting our own businesses, finishing our novels, selling our albums, or getting out to those casting calls, we feel chained to our chairs, shackled to our spreadsheets, drowned in our dead-end day jobs.

And the prevailing wisdom is that you just have to quit the job, cut the cord, take the leap from the job that you tolerate to the work that you love. Unfortunately, following that wisdom has led far too many people to financial ruin, frustrated ambitions, and unfulfilled dreams. There's a better way -- and it doesn't involve quitting your day job to chase your dreams.

Don't be a quitter Jon Acuff's book, Quitter, is filled with wise ideas about why keeping your day job is a better path to achieving your dreams. Here are just some of the reasons Acuff gives for keeping your day job while you pursue your dreams:

When you have a day job that meets your financial needs, you have the freedom to pursue only the things that move you closer to your dreams. When you quit your day job, you might have to say "yes" to things that make you money while actually pulling you further off course.

When you have a day job that you can contain and control, you have the time to truly plan your strategy, make connections, and lay the groundwork while still making an income.

When you have a day job that isn't quite your dream, you have the motivation to hustle in ways that move your dream forward.

From his experience and perspective, the people who build and actually achieve their biggest dreams aren't those that cut the cord rashly and irresponsibility. Instead, they're the ones you have the discipline and determination to use their current situations to support their ambitions. Here are some quotations from Quitter to give you some food for thought:

"When you keep your day job, all opportunities become surplus propositions rather than deficit remedies. You only have to take the ones that suit your dream best."

"Quitting a job doesn't jump-start a dream because dreams take planning, purpose, and progress to succeed. That stuff has to happen before you quit your day job."

"I know it sounds crazy, but people with jobs tend to have more creative freedom than people without."

Finding creative freedom in your day job At this point, some of you might be thinking, "Yeah, that sounds great, but I have a demanding job that consumes all my energy, time, and resources." Sure. I get it. It is not easy to follow your passion(s) while also fulfilling that dream of having some food in your fridge and the electricity to keep it cold.

On the other hand, many accomplished folks -- and some outright geniuses -- have done exactly that. A little over a year ago, business journalist Lydia Dishman published an article on Fast Company's site called "10 Famous Creative Minds That Didn't Quit Their Day Jobs." Here are some of the highlights:

Dustin Hoffman, who started out wanting to be a classical pianist, started acting in his early 20's, but that did not pay the bills. While working as a theater actor before his 1967 breakthrough film role in The Graduate, he also worked as a waiter (of course), a temporary typist (not surprising), a toy demonstrator at Macy's, and an assistant at the New York Psychiatric Institute, where one of his responsibilities was holding patients down while they received shock treatments.

Sculptor Richard Serra, composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich, actor/writer Spalding Gray, painter/photographer Chuck Close all worked as furniture movers for Serra's Low Rate Movers company while building their oeuvres and reputations. Glass, who also worked as a plumber and a taxi driver, recalls one of his fares informing him that he shared a name with a very famous composer.

Five years after publishing the critically acclaimed Player Piano, writer Kurt Vonnegut opened and managed a Saab dealership on Cape Cod. Unfortunately, the business was a miserable failure. Vonnegut once quipped, "I believe my failure as a dealer so long ago explains what would otherwise remain a deep mystery: why the Swedes have never given me a Nobel Prize for literature." Prior to his misadventures in automotive commerce, Vonnegut worked as a news reporter and as a public relations flack for General Electric.