On shoehorning your hobby into your job (no, it won’t kill your passion)
You can monetize your passion
For many people, our jobs are not our source of joy and passion. (I mean, mine is today. But it wasn’t always like that.) We do our work, and then we come home and do whatever it is that drives us and fulfills us. We read books, we crochet, we write. That’s a healthy work-life balance.
This myth was what I erroneously believed when I finally started taking my passion of writing seriously. I wanted to find time for it; I realized I had to make time for it.
I would come home from work and write for half an hour every day before dinner.
That didn’t work, so I decided to try getting up half an hour earlier and finding time for writing then.
That also didn’t work — I found myself unable to prioritize it, hitting the snooze button instead.
I tried different schedules, habit trackers, and methods of finding time in the corners of my day to work on my writing. None of them stuck.
The problem was deeper: My energy levels were not conducive to passion projects on the side. Fresh out of grad school, at my first 9–5 job, I found myself shocked by how tired I was. No matter how much I intended to start working on my novel, I’d somehow find myself booting up Sims or scrolling Facebook instead — or just staying asleep.
When you’re tired, it’s much, much harder to follow your passion, even if it’s something you love and care about. Creative pursuits require brainpower. If you’re exhausted by your job, it’s just that much harder to make that time.
Here’s how I managed to find time for my passion project after all — with some tweaks to the game plan.
Find the common ground
I thought my job (customer service) and my passion (writing) had nothing in common. I was wrong.
Writing is in almost every single job. You write emails, you write Slack messages, you write summaries of projects. All of it is writing.
But none of that felt like super creative writing. I wish I could say I forced myself into a solution, but the truth is I stumbled upon an answer by accident one day in my customer service job.
I was getting many questions about the same new feature (product recommendations) from our customer base. I had already copy-pasted our corporate jargon answer what felt like a zillion times in Zendesk. Finally, I got fed up and wrote up a more friendly, helpful how-to about the new feature, published it on our company blog, and started linking people to that instead.
(That night, I woke up in a cold sweat because my manager had not okayed it — I spoke with her about it the next day and thankfully she was fine with it, but I recommend you confirm with your managers first if it’s OK!)
That was just the start — there were many other places my writing passion fit
As time went on, I discovered multiple ways to incorporate more writing into my job. I wrote up product launches, FAQs, thought leadership, and even ghostwrote a few LinkedIn posts for our CEO. I pitched my manager on hosting recorded workshops for our customers, too.
Ultimately, writing at work didn’t compete at all with my job— it made me better and more effective. And it was fun. I loved thinking about what our customers would likely need, and putting together resources to help them do that.
The only surprise was that I pivoted to non-fiction. Though I’d always thought I wanted to be a novelist, and I still do, I found an unexpected joy and love in writing nonfiction
Following my passion at work led to a passion-filled job
The best part is that finding time for writing at work led me to my current job as a product storyteller at Medium. I spent years creating guides, developing resources, and hosting workshops at my customer support job, as a freelancer, and as a content creator.
Ultimately, that experience led me to be uniquely qualified for the job I have now, which I adore.
Dodge the issue of monetizing your hobby
Another benefit: this approach allows you to avoid the classic burnout of trying to make money from your job. When you love something and try to add a pricetag, it can often drain the passion out of your passion project, bogging you down in the minutiae of trying to run a business or make a buck. But by doing it the other way around — make money by bringing your passion into your day job — you can keep the passion alive.
And if you feel it slipping? Scale back and focus on your core duties until you’re ready to pick it back up again.
Final thoughts
If you’re low on time and struggling to prioritize your writing hobby, find a way to work it into your job. You may be surprised by what doors it opens.
P.S. I completed this story as part of the Just Start Writing challenge hosted by Medium in June 2025. It’s not perfect, but it’s done!
