They note that the Linux computer operating system is a collaborative work created by a large community of programmers in their spare time. The Jubilee 2000 debt campaign, which has resulted in the relief of tens of billions of dollars in debt from Third World countries, started with the petitions of people with no professional lobbying experience. And an amateur astronomer using a ten‐inch telescope is credited with the discovery of a supernova.
“A Pro‐Am pursues an activity as an amateur, mainly for the love of it, but sets a professional standard,” Leadbeater and Miller say. “Pro‐Ams are unlikely to earn more than a small portion of their income from their pastime but they pursue it with the dedication and commitment associated with a professional. For Pro‐Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory; it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations.”
Leadbeater and Miller call Pro‐Ams “a new social hybrid,” noting that they pursue their passions outside of the workplace, but with an energy and dedication rarely given to acts of leisure. Pro‐Ams find this level of intensity restorative, often helping to compensate for less‐than‐inspiring jobs.
Some people do truly remarkable work as amateurs. Arthur C. Clarke was a best‐selling science fiction writer, author of, among other novels, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama. He’d already begun his writing career when he became an officer in the British Royal Air Force. While there, he observed scientists in the air force’s radar division and became fascinated with their work. In 1945 he published an article in Wireless World magazine entitled “Extra‐Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World‐Wide Radio Coverage?” In it, he posited the use of satellites in geostationary orbit to broadcast television signals around the globe.
Most scientists dismissed this proposition as yet another work of science fiction. However, Clarke had a very keen interest in the subject, and he had studied it carefully. His proposal was solid technically and, as we all now know, utterly prescient. The specific geostationary orbit Clarke proposed is now known as the Clarke orbit, and hundreds of satellites use it. And while Clarke made his living in the upper stratospheres of the New York Times best‐seller list, it’s the work he did as an amateur (specifically a letter to the editors of Wireless World that preceded his article) that sits in the National Air and Space Museum.
Susan Hendrickson hasn’t had a particular profession at all. She dropped out of high school, became a skilled scuba diver, taught herself to identify rare marine specimens, became an expert at finding amber insect fossils, and has lived a multifaceted life as an explorer and adventurer. In 1990, Hendrickson joined an archaeological expedition in South Dakota led by the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. The work started extremely slowly. The group explored six outcrops and made no significant discoveries. Then one day, while the rest of her team was in town, Hendrickson decided to explore the only other mapped outcrop. There, she came upon a few small bones. These bones would lead to the uncovering of the largest and most complete fossil skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered—and one of the few female T. rexes ever found.
The skeleton is now on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Her name: Tyrannosaurus Sue, after the amateur archaeologist who unearthed her.
In his book The Amateurs, David Halberstam wrote about four athletes in their pursuit of Olympic gold in 1984. Unlike the track champions or basketball players who could leverage Olympic success into huge professional contracts (the Olympic Committee didn’t allow NBA stars to participate back then) or endorsement deals, the subjects Halberstam followed—scullers— had no chance of cashing in on their victories. They were doing it purely for the love of the sport and the sense of accomplishment that would come from being the best.
The book focuses most closely on Christopher “Tiff” Wood. Halberstam calls Wood “the personification of the amateur. He had put aside career, marriage, pleasure in his single‐minded pursuit of excellence in a sport that few of his fellow countrymen cared about and that was, therefore, absolutely without commercial rewards.” At thirty‐one, Wood was old for the sport (at least at the Olympic level), but he was on a mission. He’d been an alternate at the 1976 Olympics and never got to compete. He was the captain of the 1980 team that was supposed to go to Moscow. But, as a protest over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, America chose not to attend those games.
The 1984 Olympics would be Wood’s last chance for a gold medal. Within the small but devoted sculling community, he’d become something of a favorite son. Tiff Wood, as it turns out, did not come away with the gold. That fact, though, is only a sidebar to the story. What comes across in Halberstam’s depiction of Wood and the other scullers is the passion and satisfaction associated with a purely amateur pursuit. Tiff Wood discovered the Element through his nonprofessional efforts. His job was just a job. Rowing was his life.
To be in your Element, it isn’t necessary to drop everything else and do it all day, every day. For some people, at some stages in their lives, leaving their current jobs or roles to pursue their passions simply isn’t a practical proposition. Other people choose not to do that for a whole range of reasons. Many people earn their living doing one thing, and they then create time and space in their lives to do the thing they love. Some people do this because it makes greater sense emotionally. Others do it because they feel they have no alternative but to pursue their passions “on the side.”
A couple of years ago, I was leasing a new car from a dealership in Santa Monica. As it turned out, this was not easy. There was a time when the only decision you had to make when buying a car was whether to have it or not. Now you have to take a full‐scale multiple‐choice test to navigate your way between the hundreds of finishes, trims, accessories, and performance features that stand between you and the version you actually want. I’m not good at this kind of excessive decision‐making. I need help deciding what to wear in the morning, where there’s much less choice and the stakes are far lower. By the time I’d made up my mind about the car, my salesman, Bill, and I had bonded and were planning our annual reunion.
While we were waiting for the final paperwork—another lengthy process—I asked him what he did when he wasn’t working. Without missing a beat, he said he was a photographer. I asked him what he photographed, assuming he meant family weddings and pets. He said he was a sports photographer. I asked him what sports he covered. “Just surfing,” he said. I was intrigued and asked him why. He said that he’d been a surfer when he was younger and simply loved the beauty and dynamics of the sport. He went to the beach at Malibu after work, weekends, holidays—whenever he could—just to take pictures. He’d been doing this for years and had accumulated thousands of dollars’ worth of cameras, tripods, and specialized lenses. Over longer holidays, he traveled to Hawaii and Australia to catch the big surf on camera.