It’s hard being a DJ with a day job. But that’s where many of us start, and many of us stay. Whether you want to grow into a full-time business or not, having a day job that works with your DJ lifestyle is key. One of the best situations I’ve stumbled into myself is having a day job that doesn’t come home with me.
What do I mean by that? Well, simply, I have a job where I’m not expected to work after hours. In fact, because I get paid overtime, I am not allowed to do any work outside of my scheduled hours.
This is ideal for me, because it leaves my mind and my time free to work on and improve my DJ business. It took some time to get here mentally. I’ve had many salaried positions where work was always looming around the corner, and I had access to my email any time I wanted. I would carry the stress of what didn’t get finished that day home with me each night.
Because I don’t have access to any work tools outside of my job now, there is nothing I can do until my next shift. Even still, it took a few years to get used to completely disconnecting from my day job and not even thinking about it until the next day. The lack of tools hurt a bit at first because I was frustrated and worried about not being able to help right now. But eventually I came to trust my coworkers will help when I’m not there and anything else can be done when I return.
Being able to completely unplug from your day job will do wonders for your DJ business. Obviously, you will have more time to pursue events and practice you skills, but just having the mental break will free space in your mind to come up with great new ideas.
So, how do you find a job like this? The easiest path is something that you cannot do unless you are at work. This would be most of your retail and hourly positions, basically anything with front-line customer service. I highly recommend any tipped or sales positions as well. These are great training grounds for building a business and interacting with people, and usually make a very nice living along the way.
You want to avoid any sort of job where you are expected to be on-call or respond to issues outside of work hours. I used to be in IT support and management, and I felt like I could never truly remove myself from work. Anytime you are responsible for others or processes that operate outside of your work hours, you are in danger of being sucked into the 24-hour support abyss.
If you already have an office job where you are not expected to be on-call, but you find yourself thinking about work all night anyway, try to set some clear boundaries. Shut off work phones and emails when you get home. Let you supervisors know that you can’t be working when you are off. Mostly for me, it was also about finding a job that didn’t have a never-ending stream of work. I’ve worked in support roles where there was too much work to do and not enough time. Even when we had a great success, we had even more work waiting behind it. I was never able to get ahead.
Once you can separate your work and home life, you will find space in your life for your DJ business. This blog couldn’t exist for me if I didn’t have the freedom from work in my personal life. Find a way to get that separation, and your success will follow.
