14 ms·

The complicated reality of doing what you love

343 points by herbertl 5y ago

65 5y ago
When a programming project starts to become this endless chore that I progressively look less forward to the more I work on it, that's when I know it's time to take a step back and ask myself why I am even doing this in the first place. Am I making this app just so I can try to make money on it, for something to put on my resume? Or am I doing it as a nice way to spend my evening? What's the point of free time if you don't enjoy it? Not every project needs to be some kind of profitable SaaS or wildly popular open source tool. It's fun to research and experiment and take a step back every once in a while and ask yourself why you're even doing this. Once it turns into a business, sure that can be fun, but you have to ask yourself -- do I even look forward to this? Is this even enjoyable? This is my free time, after all. I write code for both work and for fun. It's important for me to like my job. I don't want to spend most of my waking life toiling away at something I don't at least like to do. I also want to like my creative pursuits in my free time. If you don't enjoy doing something, why do it at all? Especially when you have the choice to do other, more enjoyable things.
- vshan 5y ago
  The weed work is the most painful though. We get through it at work because we have to. But for any personal hobby projects, I feel nails scraping blackboard level of frustration when some build issue or other trivial minutiae come up.
0xFACEFEED 5y ago
I recently had a... weird... realization. It was that for most of my career I wasn't passionate about programming computers. I was passionate about becoming successful; obtaining a highly marketable skill, making money, and gaining the respect of my peers. Programming computers was just a tool to get me there. Perhaps this is why I never got hung up on fads. Languages, frameworks, platforms, and even industries. It didn't matter to me. All that mattered was success. I should also point out that I had an extremely rigid ethical compass. It feels nice to have treated people well while doing work I was proud of. Not sure why I typed that out, but there it is.
- xwdv 5y ago
  I feel the same way, except I have poor ethics. I suspect that you must have had a supportive, life affirming upbringing, while I had the shit beaten out of me all the time by my peers.
  - DaveExeter 5y ago
    Whatever works for you!
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    I hate to imagine why you’re being downvoted. This is obviously a very self aware observation, from a place of trauma. I obviously wish you future ethical discretion you can be more proud of. Recognizing your own pain is part of that. I sure hope you’ve found/are finding a safer and healthier social world that brings out the better in you.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      If there is a safer and healthier social world I don’t know it. Much of what I see has only made me more cynical of society.
      - eyelidlessness 5y ago
        I can’t make it so, but you have my best wishes. This isn’t always the best place for kindness. I hope you’ll take mine as sincere.
  - nbzso 5y ago
    I have horrible upbringing, almost no support and worked my self from the streets in hardcore eu country towards multiple career changes and personal transformations. I have seen some horrible things and taken part in dubious endeavours. I have been betrayed from closest friends and family. So what? Society is hard to understand, the rat race is never ending, everyone is in some form pathologically unstable and in search of validation. Ethics is ultimately a personal choice. I realized early, that I don't want to define my personality as a reflection of my childhood and upbringing. This is my way to "win in life". I have all the excuses to be horrible and abusive, manipulative or even sadistic. But I am not. And this is not easy, but in the end of the day I define myself by my own ideas and honesty and honor are things to die for. Be what you want to be. But know that you have a choice towards freedom. And freedom comes from inside.
monster_group 5y ago
The first half of the article resonates with me. I didn't use to have hobbies and I used to feel like a machine just going to work, coming back, sleep, rinse and repeat. I love programming but after writing nth CRUD app in flavor of the month framework / technology, it just isn't that fulfilling anymore. I picked up couple of hobbies - teaching Sanskrit and playing guitar and my life has improved drastically. I no longer derive meaning only from work. Both hobbies are just hobbies and I do it for fun only with no intention of monetizing them. In fact, I couldn't monetize them even if I wanted to. Sanskrit is too esoteric to have any commercial value of any kind. And I truly suck at guitar. Nobody's ever gonna pay me to play guitar. But whatever I can play, gives me pleasure, so I do it. My dad asks me why I waste so much time in useless hobbies when I could be investing that time working towards next promotion and pay raise. I reply to him, they are not useless if they make me happy and content.
- kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
  I'd argue, they are also improving your mental health and making your decisions better, therefore helping you climb that ladder quicker.
- russelldjimmy 5y ago
  > My dad asks me why I waste so much time in useless hobbies when I could be investing that time working towards next promotion and pay raise There’s something to be said about a narrow focus on “tangible” benefits. Life is meant to be… lived. Such a comment can be made by someone who lives on the assumption that they have figured out all there is to be figured out in life - so much so that they are qualified to call anything that doesn’t yield an immediately tangible benefit as a “waste”. My hobbies play a strange role in my day job - one that would never have made sense in hindsight. They keep me content too, of course. But they also help me understand the subject matter in strange new ways (through the lens of the hobby).
  - chii 5y ago
    > Life is meant to be… lived. this opinion seems to be a relatively recent development as human civilization industrialized and material wealth reached more and more plentiful. However, it is an entitlement that not everyone equally has. Life is not meant to be anything, but survival. The fact that there's the idea that you can enjoy life, is a huge sign of privilege. Of course, one should chase it, but don't believe for a minute that anyone is entitled to it.
eric4smith 5y ago
Few people have the luxury of doing what they love. I used to love programming. But now, I love germinating interesting seeds more. Getting my hands into the soil. Recently I bought some potting soil from a store and put my hand it it -- wow! It was so soft and pure and beautiful. But I can't do that for a living, maybe not now, maybe when I retire from coding and saved up enough money to live the rest of my life.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  I'd like try germinating, do you know a good guide for this? What kind of equipment do you need? Can you grow an apple tree at home?
  - pelagic_sky 5y ago
    Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe all apple trees (that are editable) are grown from scions. Which is a graft of the variety of apple you want onto a root stock. I've grown a few of them in pots and transferred them to the soil.
    - eric4smith 5y ago
      You csn grow apples (and all other fruit) that are edible from seeds. It’s just that the quality is not as consistent as cloning.
  - eric4smith 5y ago
    Ahhh I just follow YouTube and blog posts. Actually universities that specialize in farming and agriculture have some of the best resources on cloning, germinating and farming you could imagine. A few professors even have YouTube channels too. Awesome shit out there.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Most of the dissonance comes from the fact that a job is much more than the core activity. When we speak of pottery as a hobby, we think of handling clay, sitting in front of a pottery wheel, choosing a fitting glaze, then admiring our finished work. The focus is on exploring and enjoying the process. You have complete control over the process and you can do as much or as little as you like because there is no delivery pressure. Sounds fun! But a pottery business is a different beast. Now, the act of making the pottery is a much smaller part of the overall workload. You have to deal with marketing, sales, payments, inventory, and communications. Your pottery time is no longer about exploring, but about replenishing inventory or handling custom orders in time to avoid bad reviews. You can't just make a piece and be done with it, you have to carefully pack it, handling shipping, drop it off, and hope that nothing goes wrong. If it does go wrong, you now have to deal with the fallout and handle angry customers. Most customers are fine, but it only takes 1 irrationally outraged customer to ruin your day. Hobbies, by definition, can't be a job. You can try to make a job or business that includes your hobby, but it's a superset of the hobby with numerous other activities that you may or may not enjoy. I do actually know a lot of people who enjoy running businesses. You might say that businesses are their hobby and delivering results to customers is their passion. Not surprisingly, they're doing quite well in both business and the mental health department. Lucky.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  This was the breakthrough my wife had when we were discussing this: there was no way she could do that for a living. She likes experimenting, and that's not part of a chef, except for some very high rated people. I am one of the lucky people that love its profession (software development) and it is also my hobby. I'm not sure how to identify the non-coding parts, I enjoy those in the profession too, but more because I like to do very well and being good at those other parts is an integral part of it. To be fair, making a team more effective goes also to my benefit, where I can do more interesting work.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    There’s still a world of difference between hobby and professional software development. In hobby software you fix the bugs that you fix; in professional software you fix the bugs that your paying customers hit. I think it’s why free software has had limited success in end-user applications.
kradeelav 5y ago
I see so many fellow digital artists (webcomic creators especially, minority ones doubly so) fall into this trap especially with patreon and who visibly resent the pressure but find it very hard to get out of the monetization loop. I wrote a little more about my experiences here, if anyone's interested from a creative side: "Carceral Content Creation" https://walonvaus.dreamwidth.org/128334.html https://walonvaus.dreamwidth.org/128334.html (also valuable context: I used to create a published webcomic but left that world for reasons that become obvious in the blog post.)
nine_k 5y ago
I still love programming, and engineering and tinkering in general. It does not mean I always love what I do for money. Not all programming is the same, like, well, not all music is the same. The particular kind you exercise very much matters. So I do tiny side projects I enjoy, stuff like home automation, tiny utilities to simplify chores, web pages, tiny games. It's still enjoyable. If I did not have to work for money, I won't quit programming. On the other hand, balancing the likeability of a job (which formally is in your "also a hobby" field) and the money it brings is a delicate act. Usually they are inversely related: the high compensation, well, compensates for the tiring job. But, unless you live alone and have no other aspirations, you got to bring home more, to keep the family up. Going to the extreme end of high pay and low satisfaction brings in burnout and depression, ultimately limiting the length and utility of such stints. Going to the extreme end of satisfaction despite low / no pay may leave you broke.
quacked 5y ago
"Doing what you love" is a total new-age garbage scam, only possible because we (most of us on HN) collectively live in the wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen, and nearly all of the important work (food, defense, fuel, manufacturing, etc.) is done by lower class citizens who don't know what an API is. Sure, the management of the empire requires critically talented minds, but how many roughnecks know what C++ is, and how many executive vice presidents know how to operate an oil rig? Don't do what you love, do something that allows you and your family (or you and your community if you're not up to the task of having a family) to build resilience, and then love your life outside of the work you do to provide for it. If that's making 200 Gs per year for 10 years slinging Javascript and then getting out of debt with the bank, do that. Don't worry so much about "loving your career", I promise you no migrant farm workers harvesting your berries love their career, and yet I doubt they wake up with internal mental crises because they haven't achieved self-actualization at work.
- tartoran 5y ago
  The downside though, if you do what you hate you’re likely going to be bad at it or hit a ceiling soon. Im not saying you should ignore the financial aspect (unless you’ve already figured that out or was handed out to you) but you should try to lean into whatever you’re best at. We see people start in a direction and then later veer their career into a different direction and are happier and more successful. It’s probably got something to do with liking it more...
- jamesrcole 5y ago
  > "Doing what you love" is a total new-age garbage scam, only possible because we (most of us on HN) collectively live in the wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen You seem to be implying that living in a wealthy, powerful society somehow invalidates the opportunities that affords. > and nearly all of the important work (food, defense, fuel, manufacturing, etc.) is done by lower class citizens who don't know what an API is. such work is important but it's not true that this is "nearly all of the important work". Our modern world couldn't exist without, for example, so many of the decades and centuries of developments in the various branches of mathematics and science. Think of how much of the modern world is dependent upon our understanding of Quantum Mechanics, for example. > Don't worry so much about "loving your career", I promise you no migrant farm workers harvesting your berries love their career, and yet I doubt they wake up with internal mental crises because they haven't achieved self-actualization at work. Some people actually do love what they do for work. All things being equal, it's better to be one of these people. One reason you can love an area of work is because you think it is important or valuable, and contributes something meaningful to society. Whereas some forms of work don't appear to contribute much to society (and I think people tend to hate these sorts of jobs). So that is a good reason for doing what you love.
syntaxing 5y ago
A big part of the issue is that we romanticize on the idea of making money while doing something we love. But like all fantasies, reality is always more disappointing due to the nature of human tendencies.
goatmale 5y ago
There is a quote that I think about a lot - I think it goes... "Aren't we lucky that we get to do something we used to love for a living?" - I think it was Colin Quinn talking about standup but I can't find it anywhere. I find myself drifting back and forth between loving every second of working in technology and hating every second immensely, but overall, the positives outweigh the negatives, I still love everyday I get to learn something new.
- Taylor_OD 5y ago
  Great quote. Almost everything gets old eventually. All of the things I really loved in the past got stale after a few months or a handful of years. Some I still do but lots I dropped. At least with coding you can move to other areas of engineers that keeps things interesting.
dmalik 5y ago
This resonates with me. I've been developing web sites since the late 90s. It was a passion/hobby of mine at the time. I monitized my hobby as a career in 2004. Since then I've come across many new hobbies. Woodworking has been my favorite. I've learned like any professional athlete that the more practice you put in the better you get. With that metaphor in mind this is something I'm trying to distill this into my children. My children are young now so it goes no further than the more you do something the better you get. They try a wide range of things understanding that they will get better with time. I don't push them on anything. I'm happy at the moment if it's just trying to get better playing Mario. Anything I can use with them to look back on as proof that putting in time will show progress. I hope to use this mentality in the future when acedemics matter.
nbzso 5y ago
I am not doing what I love. I stopped painting because of commercial success and never ending pressure to exceed expectations. I stopped painting because I decided that I paint only for myself. Period. I am interested in design and code. I like the feeling and the process of building something useful first, and beautiful after. I like my work. I don't need to be in love with it. I like being payed for delivering results. There is no need in my view of romance and emotion towards ones work. Craftsmanship comes from emotional balance and discipline. There are thousand things and experiences reserved for love. Love your children. Love your life. Love life itself. Make art for the sake of it. For the joy of creating something driven from inside. Like a kid who can enjoy meaningless wandering and play happily hour after hour. It is liberating and therapeutic.
- ffwacom 5y ago
  Assuming you’re talking about painting on some canvas as art, do you have a link to your work?
  - nbzso 5y ago
    I am talking about Alla Prima and Glazing/Underpainting/Imprimatura on canvas with oils. Old school boring stuff.:) I have link but if I share it I will blow away my anonymity here completely. And I like being a little bit anonymous. I share my opinions and life learnings, there is no need for validation from my side of the fence. But thank you, for your interest in my work.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
My current job is what I love. But I have to describe it to people this way: You love ice cream, right? Now eat an 18-wheeler full of ice cream every day. That's what "doing what you love" for a career is like. I think there is a lack of research here because so few people do "what they love" for a living. The downsides haven't been qualified; everyone assumes there are none since so few people have the luxury.
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
Living abroad and/or spending time in the "developing" world can and probably will change your perspective on work and happiness. From my experience abroad, I've come to realize: 1. Learning to appreciate and be content with what you do is usually a lot easier than "doing what you love" and getting paid for it. 2. People in the first world invest way too much time and emotional energy in this subject. If you don't elevate work into something that is expected to fulfill not just your need for money/sustenance but your desire for fame, fortune, happiness, etc., and you instead just treat it as one of life's daily activities, it doesn't become a monster that can consume you.
taneq 5y ago
"Find a way to do what you love for a living, and you'll never relax a day in your life because your passion now feels like work."
cardosof 5y ago
I believe there's an important distinction between doing what you love and doing something with love. I also believe that overall happiness is more linked to the latter than to the former. You may love coding but if you don't try to approach your daily tasks with an open heart, you may end up hating your day anyway.
jasfi 5y ago
If you can make a business out of writing software, or anything you truly enjoy, then you uncomplicate it. I'm working on a SaaS to help people do exactly that, CxO Industries [1]. [1]: https://cxo.industries https://cxo.industries
code_duck 5y ago
That’s basically my experience. Being a professional glassblower gave me enough time on the torch to grow my skills, but changed everything about my relationship with blowing glass. I’ve avoided playing music professionally for that reason. I don’t want my creativity to be impacted by commercial concerns. I want music to stay fun and pure.
moksly 5y ago
I sort of disagree that a hobby can’t be doing the same thing over and over. I know because it sure is for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD around 36 when I had my first child and simultaneously was getting in to higher management, never before realising that my coping-mechanism had been going to be early. I mean, I knew it was a stress coping mechanism, but I only had to do it in really intense weeks, which was maybe 6-10 times a year, so it was just part of life. Anyway, having a child destroyed that as well as my need for solitude to re-energise (another thing I wasn’t too aware or). Long story short I ended up with a diagnosis and a suggestion that I found myself a hobby, much like the author. I picked Blood Bowl which is Warhammer American football, and as such is a miniature hobby where you buy and glue together and then paint little plastic dolls. One of the things I enjoy the most is actually putting the miniatures together, and while I do kitbash (creativity) some of them, the real mindfulness comes from the cleaning, the preparing and the painting the same red on 16 figures. Years later I know that this is exactly why I mostly stopped programming professionally and got into management. I actually really enjoy programming, even if it’s the same stupid for loop over and over, what I don’t enjoy is co-operating with project managers and clients, constantly making creative changes rather than just implementing something. That sort of programming burned me out and that eventually pushes me into architecture and later when my bosses saw potential in me into management. I can see how taking commissions for clay cups would be similar to that. But I don’t think that always making cups would not make it a hobby just because there is less creativity in it.
- starfallg 5y ago
  It's surprising that the kinds of interactions you have in management is less chaotic and demanding than dealing with customers and project management. The highest stressors in my experience are the constant demands on your time, budgeting and evaluations.
  - moksly 5y ago
    I think different people are stressed by different things. For me it’s having to juggle the demand of multiple people who have no clue what I do. I guess some people will find a similar challenge on management, but the difference is that I’m in charge of it now and through that has the capacity to say no or delegate. I’m sure excellent programming managers set up environments that aren’t as taxing as the ones I’ve worked in, but I’m not sure I’m even succeeding in it.
locallost 5y ago
Nice article, but I can't decide if the person is happy or unhappy about the decision to turn the hobby into a job. The moment when she started doing commissioned work felt like a bad idea, but she seems to be managing it. That's the worse part of skilled work to me -- having to do ideas of other people, as if you're just a tool. This mug is green and yellow because that's what I like. No, I can't make it blue.
agumonkey 5y ago
There's an interview of Robert kyosaki, a business guy, he said something like: Young people often want to do what the love, but it's avidity. While finding a purpose is larger it involves other people. I find the general idea quite true.
- mikro2nd 5y ago
  In similar vein: I have come to loath the word "passion" as it relates to almost anything, but especially work. Claiming to be passionate about some aspect of life has become a red flag for me: Passion is hot-blooded and short-lived; usually an indication of immaturity and a vastly self-generated false image of the object of passion, whether that's a job, another person, a work of art or anything else. If you're looking for a way to make your day-to-day existence meaningful, to give yourself a sense of purpose beyond the humdrum of "paying the rent", I strongly believe that passion is entirely counterproductive as a guide. Purpose comes from your own values, suggesting that quiet, sustained contemplation is more useful as groundwork. eta: I guess this means I'm with Kyosaki on this one. ;)
  - mellavora 5y ago
    I agree with your basic point, but would add that the word "passion" has a deeper meaning that the hot-blooded, short-lived version. Something you are truly passionate about is something you are willing to suffer a great deal for. Passion's Latin root is passio, to suffer and endure hardship. For example, the passion of Christ.
pontsprit 5y ago
Now that I'm making money and am 'successful' doing what I love, I have realized that nothing could have prepared me for the contradictory reality of the making a living off of something that is deeply personal/inward directed. Even if I find myself holding together what often feels like two antithetical parts, the rewards (for now) of being able to pursue the fulfillment of my 'life activity' and what I am naturally oriented towards outweigh the dissonance. However, a pitfall is if your life activity is altered so much by capital that its creative function ceases to exist except to generate more capital; perpetuate its system - the best outcome is where capital accelerates your 'life's activity' transformative potential instead of neutralizing it. My personal solution is to turn my back on a lot of the expectations and niceties of my work and instead focus most of my energy on creation. *edited for grammar
pavlovskyi 5y ago
Not that long ago I had to deal with anxieties and finding hobby was remedium for that. But it was not perfect, because thoughts about its meaningless become stronger and stronger. Then I found out that there is really important to find some audience which can boost up your productivity and give that little spark of meaning to any thing that we do in our lifes. Reddit, HN, github were my starters (fun fact is, that I started with amigurumi knitting and deep learning side projects, simultanoeusly).
shantnutiwari 5y ago
For me: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it :( I loved writing fiction- novels, short stories, interactive fiction. At first, I would just self publish them on Amazon, no care whether anyone bought them. Then I joined a few writer groups, and they were all like "You need to market your work". And so I spent hours every week building my email list, running ads, asking for reviews (as you need them to sell books), blogs/podcasts. And pretty soon, started hating it all. Quit 2 years ago, after 7 years of writing. Have tried to restart many times, but each time, quit. My advice is: If you love someone, do it for love, dont always try to make money from it. Yeah, not a popular opinion; as soon as you show anything to people (your books, pottery, calligraphy ) the first question is "This is good, why dont you make money from it?" As if the only value anything has is by how much dollars it makes. It doesnt help with all these online "gurus" who claim you can make the big $$$ by selling anything (yes sir, ANYTHING!) online, if only you buy their expensive course. (and yes, I bought the course. And no, it did f*ck all) Sorry if a bit cynical. Hope there was a happy ending to this story....
- OJFord 5y ago
  Can't you just ignore people telling you what you 'need to do'? (Or don't even go to such meet-ups, if people there are trying to make a business out of it and you know that's not what you want?) Just go back to writing for fun?
  - shantnutiwari 5y ago
    Yes, I have thought about it. But it has been 2+ years, hard to get into the habit again. I tried a few times, but ended each time staring at the scren thinking "What the hell, this shit wont work out". I guess Im suffering from some sort of writing ptsd :)
    - Taylor_OD 5y ago
      Hey. Just want to say that if you enjoyed writing you should try again. Forget writing for anyone else. Write for you. Like no one else will read it. Even if its only a little bit. You enjoy it. I wish more people made things they didnt try to sell. It's for you. There is nothing wrong with that.
klondike_klive 5y ago
I won a very prestigious award for directing animation, which up until then had been a hobby. I rose so fast up to that point that I never learned how to animate to a production standard. On top of that, to get the show into production I had to work crazy hours for two years solid. I burned out, didn't know how to capitalise on the award, and decided to go back to entry level jobs, ostensibly to learn my craft but really I couldn't handle the pressure of the sudden acclaim. I was in a very small industry full of technically more accomplished peers and there was no room for my punky attitude towards doing things the established way. My confidence and career took a huge nosedive, and the enthusiasm was knocked out of me completely. I've managed to gain back my enthusiasm for animation but only after doing a lot of soul-searching over what I love about it and keeping that sort of stuff strictly out of hours, not expecting it to be involved in my bread-and-butter work. I still animate for fun but had to establish a very hard boundary and let go of my ideals about loving the job.
ktistec 5y ago
One thing that stands out to me is that the author has been selling herself -- her core self -- for a very long time, perhaps her entire career. She tells us this from the very start, explaining that cooking can't be her hobby any more now that it's her job. Now the new hobby is her job! I think this is a reflection of the professional pressures placed on writers trying to make a living online. Confessional writing requires sharing some sort of personal journey of growth, but it also requires building networks of people interested in you. Why are her Instagram followers ready to buy the things she makes? Why does selling seem like such a natural choice? Who wants to start an informal business? Why make it formal? Because she's already created a business platform, and that is her life. She tries to elevate her experience by fitting her experience in a broader narrative about the role of hobbies, but this rings hollow because the hobby itself is not her problem (also, note that the second pair of Gelber quotations contradict each other - hobbies are both a call to the pre-industrial, and bringing the factory into the home). The true subtext is that she's always sold herself and the monetization of her hobby was almost inevitable because of the mental habits she has cultivated throughout her life. Yes she's jealous of the artist RC, but to the author "do your own thing" is just another imperative to cultivate for a more marketable self. Why am I engaging with this article at all? Well, we all have to mold ourselves to the environments around us. I've consciously avoided monetizing my hobbies, but I've made immense efforts to cultivate a self that functions effectively in my profession. Is that a sacrifice? I'm not sure how to think about it. I wish the author would speak to what seems to me the real story here. It's not that her hobby has turned into a job through some universal process, but that she has turned her life into her work and the two cannot be separated.
overthemoon 5y ago
All of this is very much IMO: Work sucks. The happiest at work I've ever been is working with people I like, almost (but not quite) regardless of the work. Sometimes I get to do interesting and fun projects, but it's a lot of annoying meetings and stupid bugs and projects I don't give a shit about. I'm grateful for my gig, don't get me wrong, but I have to remind myself that I'm not living for this. In a perfect world I'd be living in a small community of family and friends and working in ways that directly support and aid them.
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  Just to add a counter point: I have enjoyed most jobs I have had. But I also realise that I have been quite lucky. There seems to be a lot of dysfunctional, soul destroying companies out there.
Ind007 5y ago
Any correlation to innovation and doing what you love?
lcall 5y ago
And still, making an honest living doing decent work you don't necessarily love, to support a family, is honorable and noble. Many have been beloved by their posterity for doing just that. And it is often necessary. And families are well worth it. :)
ca98am79 5y ago
I think a good start is to not do what you hate. If you can avoid that at least, then I think you are headed in the right direction.

343 points by herbertl 5y ago

65 5y ago

When a programming project starts to become this endless chore that I progressively look less forward to the more I work on it, that's when I know it's time to take a step back and ask myself why I am even doing this in the first place. Am I making this app just so I can try to make money on it, for something to put on my resume? Or am I doing it as a nice way to spend my evening? What's the point of free time if you don't enjoy it? Not every project needs to be some kind of profitable SaaS or wildly popular open source tool. It's fun to research and experiment and take a step back every once in a while and ask yourself why you're even doing this. Once it turns into a business, sure that can be fun, but you have to ask yourself -- do I even look forward to this? Is this even enjoyable? This is my free time, after all. I write code for both work and for fun. It's important for me to like my job. I don't want to spend most of my waking life toiling away at something I don't at least like to do. I also want to like my creative pursuits in my free time. If you don't enjoy doing something, why do it at all? Especially when you have the choice to do other, more enjoyable things.

vshan 5y ago
The weed work is the most painful though. We get through it at work because we have to. But for any personal hobby projects, I feel nails scraping blackboard level of frustration when some build issue or other trivial minutiae come up.

0xFACEFEED 5y ago

I recently had a... weird... realization. It was that for most of my career I wasn't passionate about programming computers. I was passionate about becoming successful; obtaining a highly marketable skill, making money, and gaining the respect of my peers. Programming computers was just a tool to get me there. Perhaps this is why I never got hung up on fads. Languages, frameworks, platforms, and even industries. It didn't matter to me. All that mattered was success. I should also point out that I had an extremely rigid ethical compass. It feels nice to have treated people well while doing work I was proud of. Not sure why I typed that out, but there it is.

xwdv 5y ago
I feel the same way, except I have poor ethics. I suspect that you must have had a supportive, life affirming upbringing, while I had the shit beaten out of me all the time by my peers.
- DaveExeter 5y ago
  Whatever works for you!
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  I hate to imagine why you’re being downvoted. This is obviously a very self aware observation, from a place of trauma. I obviously wish you future ethical discretion you can be more proud of. Recognizing your own pain is part of that. I sure hope you’ve found/are finding a safer and healthier social world that brings out the better in you.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    If there is a safer and healthier social world I don’t know it. Much of what I see has only made me more cynical of society.
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      I can’t make it so, but you have my best wishes. This isn’t always the best place for kindness. I hope you’ll take mine as sincere.
- nbzso 5y ago
  I have horrible upbringing, almost no support and worked my self from the streets in hardcore eu country towards multiple career changes and personal transformations. I have seen some horrible things and taken part in dubious endeavours. I have been betrayed from closest friends and family. So what? Society is hard to understand, the rat race is never ending, everyone is in some form pathologically unstable and in search of validation. Ethics is ultimately a personal choice. I realized early, that I don't want to define my personality as a reflection of my childhood and upbringing. This is my way to "win in life". I have all the excuses to be horrible and abusive, manipulative or even sadistic. But I am not. And this is not easy, but in the end of the day I define myself by my own ideas and honesty and honor are things to die for. Be what you want to be. But know that you have a choice towards freedom. And freedom comes from inside.

monster_group 5y ago

The first half of the article resonates with me. I didn't use to have hobbies and I used to feel like a machine just going to work, coming back, sleep, rinse and repeat. I love programming but after writing nth CRUD app in flavor of the month framework / technology, it just isn't that fulfilling anymore. I picked up couple of hobbies - teaching Sanskrit and playing guitar and my life has improved drastically. I no longer derive meaning only from work. Both hobbies are just hobbies and I do it for fun only with no intention of monetizing them. In fact, I couldn't monetize them even if I wanted to. Sanskrit is too esoteric to have any commercial value of any kind. And I truly suck at guitar. Nobody's ever gonna pay me to play guitar. But whatever I can play, gives me pleasure, so I do it. My dad asks me why I waste so much time in useless hobbies when I could be investing that time working towards next promotion and pay raise. I reply to him, they are not useless if they make me happy and content.

kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
I'd argue, they are also improving your mental health and making your decisions better, therefore helping you climb that ladder quicker.
russelldjimmy 5y ago
> My dad asks me why I waste so much time in useless hobbies when I could be investing that time working towards next promotion and pay raise There’s something to be said about a narrow focus on “tangible” benefits. Life is meant to be… lived. Such a comment can be made by someone who lives on the assumption that they have figured out all there is to be figured out in life - so much so that they are qualified to call anything that doesn’t yield an immediately tangible benefit as a “waste”. My hobbies play a strange role in my day job - one that would never have made sense in hindsight. They keep me content too, of course. But they also help me understand the subject matter in strange new ways (through the lens of the hobby).
- chii 5y ago
  > Life is meant to be… lived. this opinion seems to be a relatively recent development as human civilization industrialized and material wealth reached more and more plentiful. However, it is an entitlement that not everyone equally has. Life is not meant to be anything, but survival. The fact that there's the idea that you can enjoy life, is a huge sign of privilege. Of course, one should chase it, but don't believe for a minute that anyone is entitled to it.

eric4smith 5y ago

Few people have the luxury of doing what they love. I used to love programming. But now, I love germinating interesting seeds more. Getting my hands into the soil. Recently I bought some potting soil from a store and put my hand it it -- wow! It was so soft and pure and beautiful. But I can't do that for a living, maybe not now, maybe when I retire from coding and saved up enough money to live the rest of my life.

foxfluff 5y ago
I'd like try germinating, do you know a good guide for this? What kind of equipment do you need? Can you grow an apple tree at home?
- pelagic_sky 5y ago
  Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe all apple trees (that are editable) are grown from scions. Which is a graft of the variety of apple you want onto a root stock. I've grown a few of them in pots and transferred them to the soil.
  - eric4smith 5y ago
    You csn grow apples (and all other fruit) that are edible from seeds. It’s just that the quality is not as consistent as cloning.
- eric4smith 5y ago
  Ahhh I just follow YouTube and blog posts. Actually universities that specialize in farming and agriculture have some of the best resources on cloning, germinating and farming you could imagine. A few professors even have YouTube channels too. Awesome shit out there.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Most of the dissonance comes from the fact that a job is much more than the core activity. When we speak of pottery as a hobby, we think of handling clay, sitting in front of a pottery wheel, choosing a fitting glaze, then admiring our finished work. The focus is on exploring and enjoying the process. You have complete control over the process and you can do as much or as little as you like because there is no delivery pressure. Sounds fun! But a pottery business is a different beast. Now, the act of making the pottery is a much smaller part of the overall workload. You have to deal with marketing, sales, payments, inventory, and communications. Your pottery time is no longer about exploring, but about replenishing inventory or handling custom orders in time to avoid bad reviews. You can't just make a piece and be done with it, you have to carefully pack it, handling shipping, drop it off, and hope that nothing goes wrong. If it does go wrong, you now have to deal with the fallout and handle angry customers. Most customers are fine, but it only takes 1 irrationally outraged customer to ruin your day. Hobbies, by definition, can't be a job. You can try to make a job or business that includes your hobby, but it's a superset of the hobby with numerous other activities that you may or may not enjoy. I do actually know a lot of people who enjoy running businesses. You might say that businesses are their hobby and delivering results to customers is their passion. Not surprisingly, they're doing quite well in both business and the mental health department. Lucky.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
This was the breakthrough my wife had when we were discussing this: there was no way she could do that for a living. She likes experimenting, and that's not part of a chef, except for some very high rated people. I am one of the lucky people that love its profession (software development) and it is also my hobby. I'm not sure how to identify the non-coding parts, I enjoy those in the profession too, but more because I like to do very well and being good at those other parts is an integral part of it. To be fair, making a team more effective goes also to my benefit, where I can do more interesting work.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  There’s still a world of difference between hobby and professional software development. In hobby software you fix the bugs that you fix; in professional software you fix the bugs that your paying customers hit. I think it’s why free software has had limited success in end-user applications.

kradeelav 5y ago

I see so many fellow digital artists (webcomic creators especially, minority ones doubly so) fall into this trap especially with patreon and who visibly resent the pressure but find it very hard to get out of the monetization loop. I wrote a little more about my experiences here, if anyone's interested from a creative side: "Carceral Content Creation" https://walonvaus.dreamwidth.org/128334.html https://walonvaus.dreamwidth.org/128334.html (also valuable context: I used to create a published webcomic but left that world for reasons that become obvious in the blog post.)

nine_k 5y ago

I still love programming, and engineering and tinkering in general. It does not mean I always love what I do for money. Not all programming is the same, like, well, not all music is the same. The particular kind you exercise very much matters. So I do tiny side projects I enjoy, stuff like home automation, tiny utilities to simplify chores, web pages, tiny games. It's still enjoyable. If I did not have to work for money, I won't quit programming. On the other hand, balancing the likeability of a job (which formally is in your "also a hobby" field) and the money it brings is a delicate act. Usually they are inversely related: the high compensation, well, compensates for the tiring job. But, unless you live alone and have no other aspirations, you got to bring home more, to keep the family up. Going to the extreme end of high pay and low satisfaction brings in burnout and depression, ultimately limiting the length and utility of such stints. Going to the extreme end of satisfaction despite low / no pay may leave you broke.

quacked 5y ago

"Doing what you love" is a total new-age garbage scam, only possible because we (most of us on HN) collectively live in the wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen, and nearly all of the important work (food, defense, fuel, manufacturing, etc.) is done by lower class citizens who don't know what an API is. Sure, the management of the empire requires critically talented minds, but how many roughnecks know what C++ is, and how many executive vice presidents know how to operate an oil rig? Don't do what you love, do something that allows you and your family (or you and your community if you're not up to the task of having a family) to build resilience, and then love your life outside of the work you do to provide for it. If that's making 200 Gs per year for 10 years slinging Javascript and then getting out of debt with the bank, do that. Don't worry so much about "loving your career", I promise you no migrant farm workers harvesting your berries love their career, and yet I doubt they wake up with internal mental crises because they haven't achieved self-actualization at work.

tartoran 5y ago
The downside though, if you do what you hate you’re likely going to be bad at it or hit a ceiling soon. Im not saying you should ignore the financial aspect (unless you’ve already figured that out or was handed out to you) but you should try to lean into whatever you’re best at. We see people start in a direction and then later veer their career into a different direction and are happier and more successful. It’s probably got something to do with liking it more...
jamesrcole 5y ago
> "Doing what you love" is a total new-age garbage scam, only possible because we (most of us on HN) collectively live in the wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen You seem to be implying that living in a wealthy, powerful society somehow invalidates the opportunities that affords. > and nearly all of the important work (food, defense, fuel, manufacturing, etc.) is done by lower class citizens who don't know what an API is. such work is important but it's not true that this is "nearly all of the important work". Our modern world couldn't exist without, for example, so many of the decades and centuries of developments in the various branches of mathematics and science. Think of how much of the modern world is dependent upon our understanding of Quantum Mechanics, for example. > Don't worry so much about "loving your career", I promise you no migrant farm workers harvesting your berries love their career, and yet I doubt they wake up with internal mental crises because they haven't achieved self-actualization at work. Some people actually do love what they do for work. All things being equal, it's better to be one of these people. One reason you can love an area of work is because you think it is important or valuable, and contributes something meaningful to society. Whereas some forms of work don't appear to contribute much to society (and I think people tend to hate these sorts of jobs). So that is a good reason for doing what you love.

syntaxing 5y ago

A big part of the issue is that we romanticize on the idea of making money while doing something we love. But like all fantasies, reality is always more disappointing due to the nature of human tendencies.

goatmale 5y ago

There is a quote that I think about a lot - I think it goes... "Aren't we lucky that we get to do something we used to love for a living?" - I think it was Colin Quinn talking about standup but I can't find it anywhere. I find myself drifting back and forth between loving every second of working in technology and hating every second immensely, but overall, the positives outweigh the negatives, I still love everyday I get to learn something new.

Taylor_OD 5y ago
Great quote. Almost everything gets old eventually. All of the things I really loved in the past got stale after a few months or a handful of years. Some I still do but lots I dropped. At least with coding you can move to other areas of engineers that keeps things interesting.

dmalik 5y ago

This resonates with me. I've been developing web sites since the late 90s. It was a passion/hobby of mine at the time. I monitized my hobby as a career in 2004. Since then I've come across many new hobbies. Woodworking has been my favorite. I've learned like any professional athlete that the more practice you put in the better you get. With that metaphor in mind this is something I'm trying to distill this into my children. My children are young now so it goes no further than the more you do something the better you get. They try a wide range of things understanding that they will get better with time. I don't push them on anything. I'm happy at the moment if it's just trying to get better playing Mario. Anything I can use with them to look back on as proof that putting in time will show progress. I hope to use this mentality in the future when acedemics matter.

nbzso 5y ago

I am not doing what I love. I stopped painting because of commercial success and never ending pressure to exceed expectations. I stopped painting because I decided that I paint only for myself. Period. I am interested in design and code. I like the feeling and the process of building something useful first, and beautiful after. I like my work. I don't need to be in love with it. I like being payed for delivering results. There is no need in my view of romance and emotion towards ones work. Craftsmanship comes from emotional balance and discipline. There are thousand things and experiences reserved for love. Love your children. Love your life. Love life itself. Make art for the sake of it. For the joy of creating something driven from inside. Like a kid who can enjoy meaningless wandering and play happily hour after hour. It is liberating and therapeutic.

ffwacom 5y ago
Assuming you’re talking about painting on some canvas as art, do you have a link to your work?
- nbzso 5y ago
  I am talking about Alla Prima and Glazing/Underpainting/Imprimatura on canvas with oils. Old school boring stuff.:) I have link but if I share it I will blow away my anonymity here completely. And I like being a little bit anonymous. I share my opinions and life learnings, there is no need for validation from my side of the fence. But thank you, for your interest in my work.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

My current job is what I love. But I have to describe it to people this way: You love ice cream, right? Now eat an 18-wheeler full of ice cream every day. That's what "doing what you love" for a career is like. I think there is a lack of research here because so few people do "what they love" for a living. The downsides haven't been qualified; everyone assumes there are none since so few people have the luxury.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago

Living abroad and/or spending time in the "developing" world can and probably will change your perspective on work and happiness. From my experience abroad, I've come to realize: 1. Learning to appreciate and be content with what you do is usually a lot easier than "doing what you love" and getting paid for it. 2. People in the first world invest way too much time and emotional energy in this subject. If you don't elevate work into something that is expected to fulfill not just your need for money/sustenance but your desire for fame, fortune, happiness, etc., and you instead just treat it as one of life's daily activities, it doesn't become a monster that can consume you.

taneq 5y ago

"Find a way to do what you love for a living, and you'll never relax a day in your life because your passion now feels like work."

cardosof 5y ago

I believe there's an important distinction between doing what you love and doing something with love. I also believe that overall happiness is more linked to the latter than to the former. You may love coding but if you don't try to approach your daily tasks with an open heart, you may end up hating your day anyway.

jasfi 5y ago

If you can make a business out of writing software, or anything you truly enjoy, then you uncomplicate it. I'm working on a SaaS to help people do exactly that, CxO Industries [1]. [1]: https://cxo.industries https://cxo.industries

code_duck 5y ago

That’s basically my experience. Being a professional glassblower gave me enough time on the torch to grow my skills, but changed everything about my relationship with blowing glass. I’ve avoided playing music professionally for that reason. I don’t want my creativity to be impacted by commercial concerns. I want music to stay fun and pure.

moksly 5y ago

I sort of disagree that a hobby can’t be doing the same thing over and over. I know because it sure is for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD around 36 when I had my first child and simultaneously was getting in to higher management, never before realising that my coping-mechanism had been going to be early. I mean, I knew it was a stress coping mechanism, but I only had to do it in really intense weeks, which was maybe 6-10 times a year, so it was just part of life. Anyway, having a child destroyed that as well as my need for solitude to re-energise (another thing I wasn’t too aware or). Long story short I ended up with a diagnosis and a suggestion that I found myself a hobby, much like the author. I picked Blood Bowl which is Warhammer American football, and as such is a miniature hobby where you buy and glue together and then paint little plastic dolls. One of the things I enjoy the most is actually putting the miniatures together, and while I do kitbash (creativity) some of them, the real mindfulness comes from the cleaning, the preparing and the painting the same red on 16 figures. Years later I know that this is exactly why I mostly stopped programming professionally and got into management. I actually really enjoy programming, even if it’s the same stupid for loop over and over, what I don’t enjoy is co-operating with project managers and clients, constantly making creative changes rather than just implementing something. That sort of programming burned me out and that eventually pushes me into architecture and later when my bosses saw potential in me into management. I can see how taking commissions for clay cups would be similar to that. But I don’t think that always making cups would not make it a hobby just because there is less creativity in it.

starfallg 5y ago
It's surprising that the kinds of interactions you have in management is less chaotic and demanding than dealing with customers and project management. The highest stressors in my experience are the constant demands on your time, budgeting and evaluations.
- moksly 5y ago
  I think different people are stressed by different things. For me it’s having to juggle the demand of multiple people who have no clue what I do. I guess some people will find a similar challenge on management, but the difference is that I’m in charge of it now and through that has the capacity to say no or delegate. I’m sure excellent programming managers set up environments that aren’t as taxing as the ones I’ve worked in, but I’m not sure I’m even succeeding in it.

locallost 5y ago

Nice article, but I can't decide if the person is happy or unhappy about the decision to turn the hobby into a job. The moment when she started doing commissioned work felt like a bad idea, but she seems to be managing it. That's the worse part of skilled work to me -- having to do ideas of other people, as if you're just a tool. This mug is green and yellow because that's what I like. No, I can't make it blue.

agumonkey 5y ago

There's an interview of Robert kyosaki, a business guy, he said something like: Young people often want to do what the love, but it's avidity. While finding a purpose is larger it involves other people. I find the general idea quite true.

mikro2nd 5y ago
In similar vein: I have come to loath the word "passion" as it relates to almost anything, but especially work. Claiming to be passionate about some aspect of life has become a red flag for me: Passion is hot-blooded and short-lived; usually an indication of immaturity and a vastly self-generated false image of the object of passion, whether that's a job, another person, a work of art or anything else. If you're looking for a way to make your day-to-day existence meaningful, to give yourself a sense of purpose beyond the humdrum of "paying the rent", I strongly believe that passion is entirely counterproductive as a guide. Purpose comes from your own values, suggesting that quiet, sustained contemplation is more useful as groundwork. eta: I guess this means I'm with Kyosaki on this one. ;)
- mellavora 5y ago
  I agree with your basic point, but would add that the word "passion" has a deeper meaning that the hot-blooded, short-lived version. Something you are truly passionate about is something you are willing to suffer a great deal for. Passion's Latin root is passio, to suffer and endure hardship. For example, the passion of Christ.

pontsprit 5y ago

Now that I'm making money and am 'successful' doing what I love, I have realized that nothing could have prepared me for the contradictory reality of the making a living off of something that is deeply personal/inward directed. Even if I find myself holding together what often feels like two antithetical parts, the rewards (for now) of being able to pursue the fulfillment of my 'life activity' and what I am naturally oriented towards outweigh the dissonance. However, a pitfall is if your life activity is altered so much by capital that its creative function ceases to exist except to generate more capital; perpetuate its system - the best outcome is where capital accelerates your 'life's activity' transformative potential instead of neutralizing it. My personal solution is to turn my back on a lot of the expectations and niceties of my work and instead focus most of my energy on creation. *edited for grammar

pavlovskyi 5y ago

Not that long ago I had to deal with anxieties and finding hobby was remedium for that. But it was not perfect, because thoughts about its meaningless become stronger and stronger. Then I found out that there is really important to find some audience which can boost up your productivity and give that little spark of meaning to any thing that we do in our lifes. Reddit, HN, github were my starters (fun fact is, that I started with amigurumi knitting and deep learning side projects, simultanoeusly).

shantnutiwari 5y ago

For me: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it :( I loved writing fiction- novels, short stories, interactive fiction. At first, I would just self publish them on Amazon, no care whether anyone bought them. Then I joined a few writer groups, and they were all like "You need to market your work". And so I spent hours every week building my email list, running ads, asking for reviews (as you need them to sell books), blogs/podcasts. And pretty soon, started hating it all. Quit 2 years ago, after 7 years of writing. Have tried to restart many times, but each time, quit. My advice is: If you love someone, do it for love, dont always try to make money from it. Yeah, not a popular opinion; as soon as you show anything to people (your books, pottery, calligraphy ) the first question is "This is good, why dont you make money from it?" As if the only value anything has is by how much dollars it makes. It doesnt help with all these online "gurus" who claim you can make the big $$$ by selling anything (yes sir, ANYTHING!) online, if only you buy their expensive course. (and yes, I bought the course. And no, it did f*ck all) Sorry if a bit cynical. Hope there was a happy ending to this story....

OJFord 5y ago
Can't you just ignore people telling you what you 'need to do'? (Or don't even go to such meet-ups, if people there are trying to make a business out of it and you know that's not what you want?) Just go back to writing for fun?
- shantnutiwari 5y ago
  Yes, I have thought about it. But it has been 2+ years, hard to get into the habit again. I tried a few times, but ended each time staring at the scren thinking "What the hell, this shit wont work out". I guess Im suffering from some sort of writing ptsd :)
  - Taylor_OD 5y ago
    Hey. Just want to say that if you enjoyed writing you should try again. Forget writing for anyone else. Write for you. Like no one else will read it. Even if its only a little bit. You enjoy it. I wish more people made things they didnt try to sell. It's for you. There is nothing wrong with that.

klondike_klive 5y ago

I won a very prestigious award for directing animation, which up until then had been a hobby. I rose so fast up to that point that I never learned how to animate to a production standard. On top of that, to get the show into production I had to work crazy hours for two years solid. I burned out, didn't know how to capitalise on the award, and decided to go back to entry level jobs, ostensibly to learn my craft but really I couldn't handle the pressure of the sudden acclaim. I was in a very small industry full of technically more accomplished peers and there was no room for my punky attitude towards doing things the established way. My confidence and career took a huge nosedive, and the enthusiasm was knocked out of me completely. I've managed to gain back my enthusiasm for animation but only after doing a lot of soul-searching over what I love about it and keeping that sort of stuff strictly out of hours, not expecting it to be involved in my bread-and-butter work. I still animate for fun but had to establish a very hard boundary and let go of my ideals about loving the job.

ktistec 5y ago

One thing that stands out to me is that the author has been selling herself -- her core self -- for a very long time, perhaps her entire career. She tells us this from the very start, explaining that cooking can't be her hobby any more now that it's her job. Now the new hobby is her job! I think this is a reflection of the professional pressures placed on writers trying to make a living online. Confessional writing requires sharing some sort of personal journey of growth, but it also requires building networks of people interested in you. Why are her Instagram followers ready to buy the things she makes? Why does selling seem like such a natural choice? Who wants to start an informal business? Why make it formal? Because she's already created a business platform, and that is her life. She tries to elevate her experience by fitting her experience in a broader narrative about the role of hobbies, but this rings hollow because the hobby itself is not her problem (also, note that the second pair of Gelber quotations contradict each other - hobbies are both a call to the pre-industrial, and bringing the factory into the home). The true subtext is that she's always sold herself and the monetization of her hobby was almost inevitable because of the mental habits she has cultivated throughout her life. Yes she's jealous of the artist RC, but to the author "do your own thing" is just another imperative to cultivate for a more marketable self. Why am I engaging with this article at all? Well, we all have to mold ourselves to the environments around us. I've consciously avoided monetizing my hobbies, but I've made immense efforts to cultivate a self that functions effectively in my profession. Is that a sacrifice? I'm not sure how to think about it. I wish the author would speak to what seems to me the real story here. It's not that her hobby has turned into a job through some universal process, but that she has turned her life into her work and the two cannot be separated.

overthemoon 5y ago

All of this is very much IMO: Work sucks. The happiest at work I've ever been is working with people I like, almost (but not quite) regardless of the work. Sometimes I get to do interesting and fun projects, but it's a lot of annoying meetings and stupid bugs and projects I don't give a shit about. I'm grateful for my gig, don't get me wrong, but I have to remind myself that I'm not living for this. In a perfect world I'd be living in a small community of family and friends and working in ways that directly support and aid them.

mbrodersen 5y ago
Just to add a counter point: I have enjoyed most jobs I have had. But I also realise that I have been quite lucky. There seems to be a lot of dysfunctional, soul destroying companies out there.

Ind007 5y ago

Any correlation to innovation and doing what you love?

lcall 5y ago

And still, making an honest living doing decent work you don't necessarily love, to support a family, is honorable and noble. Many have been beloved by their posterity for doing just that. And it is often necessary. And families are well worth it. :)

ca98am79 5y ago

I think a good start is to not do what you hate. If you can avoid that at least, then I think you are headed in the right direction.