Don't Quit Your Day Job

The dawn of the internet has given rise to a host of unique opportunities to change the face of work. We're seeing this in the midst of a global quarantine with many both out of work, and many minimally disrupted and able to leverage technology to continue their jobs from home.

The internet has also opened the door to a kind of monetization that wouldn't have been possible a couple decades ago. When my kids were younger we surfed YouTube a bit, since we didn't have cable or TV, and my wife and I noticed these channels that consisted of a kid literally just opening up toys getting millions of views. Somebody (somebody's parents, that is) must have seen a golden opportunity and cashed in on it.

You see this phenomenon in the Catholic media world as well of people carving out a kind of entrepreneurial niche and gradually building up a sizable following. As popularity gains momentum and the time constraints of working a 9-5 while moonlighting as a Catholic-whatever gets to be too much, they take a leap of faith and step out into what might regarded as a true passion (or calling). Their bread and butter, for better or for worse, is now largely dependent on an audience to receive the message.

There seem to be a few dangers (ie, traps) here that become apparent as time goes on.

One is that you have to contend with the alarmingly short half-life of the American content-consuming attention span. The baby needs to be fed, like a panda in a zoo needs his supply of bamboo. Since you're not actually charging for a service that people can get more or less for free, web-traffic more or less dictates your salary.

How do you balance providing what you see as an essential and needed message and service while resisting the need to prostitute it? It's a kind of content-porn--you have to creatively keep people tuning in, entertained, fed, while maintaining novelty in perpetuum. The more you push the envelope to generate the clicks/shares/likes, the harder it is to take down from wherever you peg that notch. Or in the dealer's lexicon, once you do crack, it's hard to go back.

When my dad was a waiter in Atlantic City in his twenties, he had a distinct memory of the maitre d saying, "push the drinks...it's where we make our money." This would ensure that growing up, my brothers and I were never allowed to order sodas or milk with our meals, frugal as he was.

Same thing with content. "Controversy sells." You see it in journalism, you see it in headlines, you see it with clickbait, and celebrity Catholics of course are not immune. It is a great temptation that's hard to resist when you know it's what stands between you and your family's monthly grocery bill.

There is also an illusion of brand loyalty. Nobody pays for anything when you can get it for free, unless you have a good deal of value-oriented buy-in. For better of worse, the delivered message does not exist in a vacuum, and is tied to the mouth that speaketh it forth. As anyone who has fallen from grace in the blogosphere knows, one misplaced heterodox statement or an inadvertent step from the party platform can result in a banishment outside the doors of the feudal kingdom, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. It's a precarious position to be in when you're livelihood more or less depends on your status and good name.

There's nothing wrong with looking to make a living or being creative, and there are definitely messages that need to get out there. As a provider, however, I personally would be reticent about putting all my eggs in one basket with something as precarious as a faith-based monetizer.

What's the answer to the problem, then, of men who assume these roles and find themselves trapped? And if they don't do it, how will The Message get out? Well, it may be a little late at that point to suggest the old adage, "don't quit your day job," but if anyone asked I would suggest just that.

Maybe it's just me, and not that I have the opportunity to do so, but I would be reticent to conflate my faith and work. I find myself having the luxury and desire to write about faith, etc, mostly because it is not my work, but a respite from it. Sure, I don't have a big audience, but I have found some people have benefitted from the little tidbits here and there I'm able to launch into internet-space for public consumption. I appreciate my work even more because it stands on its own and provides a myriad of benefits and intangibles that gives me the mental bandwith to leave it on the table at quitting time. I like having a garden, but I like it because it's not my job to grow food. I find I have a freedom to write about what I want to write about as it relates to faith because there's no hand that feeds me to accidentally bite. I'm grateful for my day job.

I'm sure there's a place for the Catholic celebrity, but personally I wouldn't want to be one. It must be so hard--I mean, not ditch digging or pipe laying hard, which gives a degree of satisfaction because it is so strictly work, necessary work, tiring work, and provides one's daily bread. I mean hard in the sense of the anxiety of always having to up the game, or the slog of providing content for the long haul, or simply the volatility of the public tastes and issues du jour and being constantly on guard against the cult of personality and thinking you are more important than you really are. Regardless, there is dignity in work, it is a gift from God and one not to be taken for granted in these times of pandemic. Do what God calls you to in your state of life and you will have peace even when you suffer, as long as you are doing it for the right reasons.