The Best Day Jobs for Aspiring Artists and Other Creative Types

Image via Complex Original

Don't get me wrong, there are many hard working secretaries out there. You just don't want to be that kind of secretary. You want to work at a place where they think they need a secretary, but they don't really need a secretary. Gyms, small businesses that aren't booking many clients, semi-retired dentists: these are the kind of low pressure environments where you should seek work. If you land a gig at a school or business that is actually doing business, you're never going to have time to work on your experimental poetry between phone calls.

Yes, in New York City this is a job that can pay your rent. There may not be a thriving dog walking economy in your city of choice, but every city has a job like this. Pay attention to the idiosyncrasies of the local economy and see if you can take advantage of it. In fast-paced cities, you might be able to make a lot of money based on the fact that people don't have very much time. I know guys who pay their rent in New York City by walking dogs for four hours a day. I also know guys in New York City who have to work two jobs that are far more difficult than dog walking just to make ends meet. Study up on supply and demand and you might just find that you can make a lot more doing a lot less.

There is a beautiful zen-like detachment that comes with manual labor. Even if you think you're a people person, after a year or two of dealing with people in a business context, I assure you that you will no longer be a people person. Some of the best jobs I've ever had have been manual labor jobs. I've crated apples in an orchard, shoved plants around a greenhouse, loaded trucks at FedEx, and dug out sand traps on a golf course, and none of those jobs were all that bad. An added bonus: I didn't have to worry about a gym membership while I worked those jobs. The problem is that manual labor doesn't pay very well. In every one of those jobs I had semi-legal and ex-convict co-workers. They were great guys for the most part, but they wouldn't have gotten hired as waiters or retail clerks; a saturated market means low wages. If you can deal with the meager amount of cash, manual labor is one of the best day jobs around.

As far as I can tell, whether you are called a babysitter or a nanny largely depends on how much money your employer makes. If you are from a foreign country and your boss assumes he might be able to someday have sex with you, they'll call you an au pair. It is preferable to be a nanny. Whether you are babysitting for the lower, middle, or upper class, the rule is the same: the kids are the key. Bribe the child with ice cream, television, or independence so you can rehearse your audition monologue. Give them what they want and in exchange take the time you need to do you. If the child eventually tries to turn traitor and rat you out for dereliction of duty, they'll have to think long and hard about the dirt you have on them. All is fair when chasing your dreams, and you might have to step on some toddler backs to get there.

Yes, this also happens to be my job. I don't want to sound like one of those jackasses on Facebook who posts statuses that say "I have the best job in the world <3," but this is not a bad gig. The benefit of freelance writing is that you can do it on your own time. Freelance graphic design, freelance photography, and freelance exotic dancing also have this benefit, but everyone thinks they can write (as is evidenced by the opinions of my commenters I love so very much).

The upside to writing is that it is flexible. The downside is that most places don't want to pay you, because, as I said before, everyone thinks they can write. (Yes, Complex does pay me. No I can't get you hired because that takes food off my table, and I don't know you.) For the record, copywriting pays way better than, say, writing lists giving career advice, but if you've ever tried writing intraoffice e-mails about treadmills, you know why copywriters make more of that cash.

If you discovered your life's passion after spending four years and thousands of dollars on something else, you may not be totally S.O.L. Just because you've decided to become a mime doesn't mean you have to completely leave behind your once lucrative career in dental hygiene. I have a friend who is now a successful comedy writer who went to law school. While I slaved away at the Apple Store for forty hours a week, he worked ten hours a week doing the work that none of the other lawyers at the firm wanted. You don't want to know how much more he made than I did in those ten hours. Another friend is a licensed personal trainer by day and a stand-up comic by night. William Carlos Williams held his job as a doctor for most of his life. Odds are, whatever bullshit you're writing in your journal can't touch William Carlos Williams, so don't be afraid to hang on to that safety net until you truly don't need it.

Be careful with this one. Bartending is a tempting path, but it has led many astray. Though you can make as much in one night as most jobs pay in the better part of a week, you could also end up a drunken mess doing coke off of a urinal at five in the morning. Before you commit to the life of the bartender, be honest with yourself. If you have the wherewithal to get up early and pursue your craft, and your industry doesn't require crucial networking time in the evening, give it a try. If you start finding yourself drunk every night and not in that Hemingway/Faulkner write your way out of despair kind of way, make sure you have the resolve to hang up the vest.

Look we've all seen the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada. Some of us have seen The Devil Wears Prada with our girlfriends. A smaller subset of that group have seen The Devil Wears Prada over and over again as a coping mechanism following long days grinding it out in the rat race in this cruel cruel world. Regardless of your relationship with The Devil Wears Prada, you learned that being a personal assistant can really suck. While that is true, assisting can be flexible and provide a lot of down time. The bottom line is that people don't really have as much going on as they think they have going on, and as the person who manages what someone has going on, you stand to benefit. On those days when the calendar opens up and there's just nothing left to take to the dry cleaners, you can work towards your goal of someday needing a personal assistant. Also, even if the person you are personally assisting doesn't have connections in your field, they are important enough to need a personal assistant, which means they might be connected.

Retail is terrible. You have jerks looking over your shoulder at every moment, waiting for an excuse to sell you down the river in exchange for a middling promotion. Now imagine if you were the only one in the store. Suddenly, things don't look so bad. Whether you're a night watchman, janitor, or zookeeper, a job where you can work alone is the artist's dream. Taking an hour here or there to shirk your duties and dig into your art could become a common occurance. If the boss doesn't give you enough work to fill the day, the only person who will ever know is you. Working alone is the next best thing to not having to work at all.

If you are trying to break in, sometimes it helps to work for the guys doing the breaking. Some people can't handle being the person taking the tickets instead of the person at the show, getting coffee for the person getting great shots, or fashioning a sandwich for a fashion designer. It's usually best to suck it up, swallow your pride, and get as close to the game as you can. Granted, sometimes this is a counterproductive move. I know people who went into publishing and grew to hate writing or became film production assistants and never made another short. Look, if being close to what you love kills your passion, it might be that you never really loved it that much to begin with. In the meantime, grab some coffee and try to learn as much as you can from the masters.