A student performer recently reached out to ask me about transitioning from college to “the real world” while pursuing comedy and video production.
His eyes lit up describing an intimate dorm room improv show he runs: 20–25 people packed in weekly for pure joy and experimentation. Then came a familiar tension: one friend urged him to monetize it immediately, while another suggested preserving its organic magic.
There's tremendous pressure to monetize every passion.
The value of an experience is not equivalent to its market value.
The Pressure to Monetize
In the connected but pre-algorithmic world of my late teens and 20s (during my “previous life” in journalism and entertainment) I used to sleep two or three hours a night. I was possessed by an almost manic drive to promote every show, every project, every creative endeavor. At the time, it worked. I brute-forced a network effect around me.
As I became a modest live radio host & TV/web producer (and a bridge builder between European and American comedy scenes) I thought this relentless hustle was the only path forward for what I loved. Pack 100+ people into venues night after night, publish three videos per week, burn through social media campaigns and flyers–all while trying to nurture the creative spark that drew me to comedy in the first place.
But there's a darker side to ubiquitous hustle culture.
The Hustle Trap and the Liberation Paradox
At my lowest point, I had turned everything–even writing and editing comedy scrips and videos—into a task to be optimized. The joy was draining away, replaced by metrics and promotional strategies. It hasn't been until I separated my passions from my financial stability that I found an improved balance. Far from perfect, but a balance.
My younger friend called it the “9-to-5 to fund 5-to-9” approach.
That sums up the profound paradox in my journey: I quit my passion as a job to follow my passion as a passion. While conventional wisdom tells people to abandon stable employment to 'follow their dreams,' I did the reverse—I needed to liberate my creative work from market pressures.
In the current status of things, this feels like a practical compromise to me. The day job pays the bills, and finances your creative endeavors, allowing them to breathe without the suffocating pressure of paying rent. Sure, I could still use help paying for hosted services, maintenance, tools and, dare I say, more creative exploration shared into this world. That's why I started S★Projects. But I believe in the ability to refuse having to monetize what brings you joy.
“You mean: it's okay to have a boring job.” he acknowledged.
I get it: compromises feel like betrayal.
If you can pay rent with what you love, great. At some point, just remember to ask yourself if what you make is for your enjoyment, or to chase the algorithmic landscape. Because today's writers, painters, artists, face a double bind: extractive “AI” devours entry-level gigs (voice acting, copywriting), while social platforms demand relentless self-promotion. Burnout isn't a risk—it's the default. It's the hidden cost of playing the game.
Those who publicly succeed at it, and perhaps you admired growing up, know that, in our current society, there are two sides to their art.
The Economics of Art
Once, while speaking with a veteran comedy director, mentor, and theater owner in Chicago, they candidly dissected for me the business model of comedy institutions: “The shows are just marketing for classes and booze,” they'd say, crystal clear. “That's where the real money is.”
The inspiring performances? Often loss leaders for the unglamorous revenue streams that keep the lights on.
This mirrors a deeper brutal, but clarifying, model for art's value: survival increasingly depends on adjacent systems—teaching, merch, Patreon subscriptions. Which is the paradox, the tension to monetize.
We can compare most modern creative work to painting: “no longer vital, but irrepressible.” Paintings survived photography. Art will survive GPT-7.
Because the joy of dorm shows isn't about scaling; it's about live failure, the gasps, and laughs of a scene's pivots. Those moments can't be automated. Dorm shows work well because they're unburdened by ROI.
Isn't it counterproductive to turn your passion, which brings fun, into something that sucks the fun out of it? The value of an experience is not equivalent to its market value.
Preserving Your Joy in the Algorithmic Age
I wish I'd understood this sooner: not everything needs to be scaled, optimized, or transformed into a business model. Sometimes, a packed dorm room show that makes people laugh is what makes you the happiest. Sometimes, the magic lies precisely in keeping something small, personal, and pure.
When algorithms generate voice acting and “AI” threatens to reshape creative industries, perhaps the most valuable things will be those that remain stubbornly human, intentionally intimate, and deliberately unoptimized. You are allowed to make a deliberate choice to limit consumption and production to preserve autonomy and joy.
A great question after “How can I make this profitable?” is “Does this make me happy?”
Make what you think must be made: Let your art be an antiportfolio.