T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland was published – and then – T.S. Eliot kept his day job.
I know times are different, pay was different, and we don’t know the exact financial situation he was in – but this is an encouraging story.
Because maybe your side-hustle should always be just that, something done in addition to.
Or heck, maybe it’s ok if you want to do more than one thing.
See, our chances of success increase with each skill we add.
A banking expert is one thing. But a banking expert who is an experienced writer is another. And they are something else again if you add a law degree on top.
Do you see it?
Understand: Success in one area can cause success in other areas too.
T. S. Eliot’s landmark work, The Waste Land, has been hailed as one of the twentieth century’s most significant poems. But after publishing it in 1922, Eliot kept his London bank job until 1925, rejecting the idea of embracing professional risk. As the novelist Aldous Huxley noted after paying him an office visit, Eliot was “the most bank-clerky of all bank clerks.” When he finally did leave the position, Eliot still didn’t strike out on his own. He spent the next forty years working for a publishing house to provide stability in his life, writing poetry on the side. As Polaroid founder Edwin Land remarked, “No person could possibly be original in one area unless he were possessed of the emotional and social stability that comes from fixed attitudes in all areas other than the one in which he is being original.”
-Adam Grant, Originals
