When cycling becomes your job — is the dream all it's cracked up to be?
There are so many jaded cliches traded off of “when your passion becomes your job.” After a lifetime of cycling being my job – in one way or another, here’s Steve's take on the realities and myths.
More Features
We love an e-MTB, but are they the best choice for smaller riders? Rebecca doesn't think so
Top advice to make the soggy season more bearable
[Photography by Steve Thomas]
“When your hobby (er, passion) becomes your job, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Is it true? Well, to those looking in from the outside and without seeing into the shadows behind, maybe yes. From inside looking out, the view may be very different, even if many of us inside do indeed cling on to the undeniable positives of working or earning a living from cycling and bikes. In my experience, the truth is far removed from the dreamy mantras.
- 32in wheels for mountain bikes are here but do we need them?
- Gravel is better without tech
- Riding bikes – what’s it all about?
As a long-term one-man band working within cycling, in one way or another, is it really a dream life, or is it a passion killer, and a life with just the proverbial peanuts scattered on the table?
When most of us think of cycling being our job, we tend skip the production lines and drift towards the assumed glamourous side; this supposedly involves endless great rides on the world’s best trails, strutting the fanciest bikes, living the dream, no stresses, free bling and travel by the truck load, and to some tiny degree that - in part, for some can be true, but infrequent. Though I can only really speak and assess things from my own standpoint.
With any assumed “dream job,” there are always caveats, stuff we rarely talk about – after all, people don’t buy or want to hear any negativity (or harsh truths). Happy, sunny, and unreal models on unaffordable bikes are the currency of dreams, and always have been.
IMG_2897.jpg, by Liam Mercer
In the majority of cases, and in particular mine, even if my (anti) social media posts may well show me riding a bike on great trails every week, the reality is far from this – a curse of modern-day quickfire digital life. Many of us, both inside and outside of the industry, do get very limited time to actually ride the bikes we all love. We may well write about and work with them, and yet for me, bike time always comes with compromises. There has to be a work justification to it – there has to be images or video, or an element of testing kit, otherwise it’s hard to justify the time.
Yes, it is indeed a total oxymoron of my own principles and logic to doing this, I know. Tragically, this is how it’s become in this era.
The industry isn’t in a great place, while the media industry is pretty much flat on its face, slurping up the mud. Sometimes people will ask, “what are you working on now?” as if the budget to create a masterpiece is piled up behind you, ahem. When they do hear the harsh reality, the graft, the skimpy, ever-declining returns, the huge financial risks, and the hustle, they often turn away, disillusioned.
Many of us within the “bike industry” did indeed come here out of passion, and we often do love it, or at least the good parts. However, it can be a very hard slog with scant reward, especially if you’re a solo flyer.
There’s the crunch, in my opinion, with being so passionate about it, and with people knowing this, they often deem it a lifestyle choice –one that thrives off compromise. Thus, the rates, fees, and earnings all too often don’t get close to reflecting the true worth of the work and passion input.
DSCF0799.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Depending on your role, this value disparity has drastically widened in recent years, which has made those fleeting perfect moments hazed on social media and magazine glory an extremely rare commodity in reality, while the graft and hustle time behind the scenes has trebled. Yes, there have been many times over the years that I’ve reached that point of never wanting to see or ride a bike ever again, usually all from a combination of the above, but somehow it passes in time.
Just go and do something else, they often say – hah, life is never that simple. Why are we (I) still here, after all these years? Likely, because we sold our souls to those two-wheeled beasts of iron and wonder decades ago, and despite those passion-killing, harsh times of questioning the logic and reason behind this, we do still love them, for better or worse.
My advice to others has long since been not to “mix work and play,” another of those great mantras long since bandied about, and one that’s, perhaps, better rooted in reality. Although I could never see myself chained to a production line or stuck to a spreadsheet, there’s a whole lot of not so romantic practicality to earning a solid living outside of your passion and emotions, to leaving work at the office when the clock strikes five, in being able to buy and ride whatever you bikes and kit want (or can afford), to travel and ride where you want, and to do it without compromise and obligation. But, I guess, the grass is always greener, wherever you are.
You might also like:
Author block
