“One of the easiest ways to hate something you love is to turn it into your job: taking the thing that keeps you alive spiritually and turning it into the thing

“One of the easiest ways to hate something you love is to turn it into your job: taking the thing that keeps you alive spiritually and turning it into the thing that keeps you alive literally” — Austin Kleon I have never read this quote before, but I've been saying the same exact thing to people for the last 20 years. A corollary is: "Do what you love and the money will come." No. This may be true for a small percentage of people, but not for 95%. First, running a business is completely different from a hobby. And secondly, if there's no market, then there's no market. You're not going to turn left-handed toenail clippers for midgets who are between the ages of 17 and 22 years old. There's just not a big enough market. That's a silly example, but there's just some things where there's not enough buyers, or to reach the buyers, it's too expensive. I listened to that siren song of turning what you love into a job, and that was the worst mistake of my life. I grew to hate it. Let's say you bake pies and love it. It's your thing. So someone suggests that you do it for a living, because your pies are so great, and you decide to do it. Well. You start doing it commercially. Instead of doing pies when you wish, you MUST wake up at 3am every morning to start baking your fresh pies for the next day (which would eliminate me instantly...3 am, pssh.). You have employees so you have to deal with payroll. And what happens if you get a contract to deliver 500 pies to nearby grocery stores every day? And then, because you need such great quantities, you get substandard ingredients and have to use them if that's all there is, something you'd never do if you baked for yourself...you'd just wait for better ingredients. It goes on and on, whether you sell pies or services, or whatever it is.