I’m Making a Living From My Hobbies

I’m Making a Living From My Hobbies

By FRANK HYMAN

Published: January 8, 2011

IN 1986, I was a 26-year-old college dropout and world traveler who had decided that I didn’t want a job, much less a career. What I really wanted was to get paid for my hobbies: writing, gardening and politics. So I made that my goal.

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Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times

Frank Hyman has combined seven avocations into a career. He worked on a sculpture that will also serve as a home for local birds in Durham, N.C.

By the age of 28, I was writing freelance articles for a regional newspaper. At 32, I started a successful gardening business. And at 33, I cut off my ponytail, borrowed a suit and unseated an incumbent to gain a seat on the City Council in Durham, N.C., where I served part time for four years.

Now I make a comfortable living from the following seven hobbies — though sometimes I prefer the terms “avocations” or “callings,” as they better reflect my seriousness:

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Sculpture. I have completed 18 site-specific residential sculptures. For example, using a chain saw, I created a castle out of a tree stump.

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Stonemasonry. I build old-style stone walls without mortar.

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Woodworking. Clients hire me to create tree houses, moon gates and trellises.

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Gardening. I create residential gardens that grow flowers, food and fragrance. When making a garden, I feel like I’m a kid who’s out at recess, playing with rocks and sticks and dirt.

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Photography. My images have been printed in national magazines.

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Writing. My work has appeared in gardening magazines, and I am a contributing editor for Horticulture magazine.

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Politics. Since leaving the City Council, I’ve worked as a community organizer, and last fall, I was hired as campaign manager for a candidate for a superior court judge seat. (He lost.)

Oh, and if talking and waving your arms around in front of a crowd could be considered a hobby, I teach a local politics class at a friend’s bed and breakfast, and have been recruited to speak about gardening at conferences and public gardens.

In short, I feel as if I haven’t had a regular “job” since 1992. I’m riding out the recession just fine — staying busy during the course of the day with what strikes my mood. Often, that means writing in the morning, making gardens or sculptures in the afternoon, and always carrying my Canon camera while on errands.

You might think it would be hard to juggle my clients, but I screen out the impatient ones with my lackadaisical phone message: “ ... not sure when I’ll get back to you.” And when we meet, I surreptitiously gauge them for reasonableness by saying things like: “I can get to it in March. Or maybe April.”

My health insurance is inferior to what’s available in other developed democracies, but it’s not bad. I also enjoy a European-style schedule of five or six weeks’ annual vacation. And I can afford to invest in my retirement. It also helps that my wife makes money through a book design business of which she is a co-owner.

I understand if you’re not ready to trade your day job for making a living from your hobbies. But for those who are game, here are my touchstones.

First, I’d say that you can find out what makes you happy only by trying lots of things. I didn’t discover my enthusiasm for plants until I was 20 and watching foreign friends season frites with rosemary that grew wild next to our tents in a Spanish orange grove.

You also have to take ownership of your education. Read what you need. Follow your curiosity. Even now, I budget nearly $1,000 a year for workshops, books and conferences.

Also be aware of the “90 percent rule.” That means that for “glamorous” professions like sports, art, entertainment and, yes, writing, about 90 percent of the people who try to make a living that way never make a red cent. About 9 percent might make some money in their field, and 1 percent or less are able to make some kind of living, and probably not a glamorous one.

I couldn’t — and given my temperament, probably wouldn’t want to — make a living from only one of my callings. I’m not vain enough to anticipate being in the 1 percent, so I figure I’m doing well if I can break into the 9 percenters. Having more than one avocation in play also means I can respond to the market and my mood, by dialing up or down the time invested in each one.

AND here’s some very important advice: You have to develop a tolerance for the setbacks that come with learning. Mistakes are just a message to try again but in a different way, and failures are a one-room schoolhouse for the adventurous. I tell my shocked gardening students that I’ve killed more plants than all of them put together. But knowing what to do sometimes comes from learning what not to do.

Lastly, I’d say that you have to untrain your brain by traveling, so get a passport.

So there it is. For the last 18 years, I’ve been living out every dream I had as a teenager and as a young man. Now that I’m 50, my existential quandary is to come up with new dreams to pursue.

Hmm. Maybe it’s time to buy a guitar.