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  1. #1
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    "My job is not my passion"

    Humans of New York just posted this on facebook, and it echoed many things I have thought about and struggled with over my adult life. Here's the full quote:

    “Honestly I just fell into it. I started as an engineering major. Then one night I was slaving over my physics homework, while my roommate sipped tea on the couch and read a novel. So I decided to be an English major like her. Ten years later I’m working as a copywriter at an advertising agency. You know that feeling when you’re pulling into the driveway, but you can’t remember anything about your ride home? That’s a bit how it feels. Like I blinked and I’m eight years down a career path that I just sort of fell into. There’s plenty to be grateful for. It’s a good enough job. I’m not living paycheck to paycheck. I can afford to have fun and take vacations. But my job is not my passion. And every story you see elevated on social media is: ‘I loved this thing. It became my passion. And then it became my career.’ There’s not many people saying: ‘My job isn’t my passion, but I love mountain biking on the weekends. And that’s enough for me.’ I think the feeling I’m trying to resolve is a sense of ‘enoughness.’ There’s so much I love about my life, but I spend most of my time at work. Is it OK to get my joy outside of work? Or does my passion need to be tied to my livelihood and a sense of responsibility?”
    A long time ago I decided that trying to find "job as passion" was a bit of an unattainable fairy tale. While some people do find that -- and I am envious of them -- most of us don't, and if we buy into the societal maxim that we should find it, we're gonna be unhappy. So I decided that the things she says above, having a decent job that allows me to live a decent lifestyle, was the thing to strive for, even if I hoped for more.

    Thoughts?
    "fuck off you asshat gaper shit for brains fucktard wanker." - Jesus Christ
    "She was tossing her bean salad with the vigor of a Drunken Pop princess so I walked out of the corner and said.... "need a hand?"" - Odin
    "everybody's got their hooks into you, fuck em....forge on motherfuckers, drag all those bitches across the goal line with you." - (not so) ill-advised strategy

  2. #2
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    "My job is not my passion"

    The world needs ditch diggers too

  3. #3
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    Even if it is your passion, after doing it for for a living for x number of years it won't be anymore.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by 4matic View Post
    The world needs ditch diggers too
    Attachment 286628
    "fuck off you asshat gaper shit for brains fucktard wanker." - Jesus Christ
    "She was tossing her bean salad with the vigor of a Drunken Pop princess so I walked out of the corner and said.... "need a hand?"" - Odin
    "everybody's got their hooks into you, fuck em....forge on motherfuckers, drag all those bitches across the goal line with you." - (not so) ill-advised strategy

  5. #5
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    I wanted to grow up to be an astronaut, center field for the Yankees, or a Formula One champ. It's been all downhill since.

  6. #6
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    Trying to make a job into your passion (or vice versa) seems to me to be a good way to destroy your enjoyment of the thing you love doing. That saying about turning a hobby into a job...

    If my job were riding bikes full-time, I'd probably start hating having to ride bikes all the time.
    Quote Originally Posted by powder11 View Post
    if you have to resort to taking advice from the nitwits on this forum, then you're doomed.

  7. #7
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    Mar 2006
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    "My job is not my passion"

    Easy to change jobs right now even if you are only half ass skilled at anything valuable.
    Last edited by 4matic; 06-24-2019 at 02:54 PM.

  8. #8
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    Right in the lumber yard.
    watch out for snakes

  9. #9
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    Mar 2011
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    NY
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ted Striker View Post
    Even if it is your passion, after doing it for for a living for x number of years it won't be anymore.
    I was really into ceramics. Kind of randomly I found a job after college making pots. It was pretty cool, but paid shit. I struck out on my own and it ruined it for me. Eventually I stopped and got a job in marketing, which eventually turned into digital marketing. I actually like it, a lot, but I can't call it a passion.

    Now, my passion is skiing and writing about it. We've got a decent size audience at NYSB. People often ask me if I am making money. Many assume my goal is to earn a living at it.

    No way. It's great fun and I don't want to fuck it up. Love to speak my mind without worrying about the spancers.

  10. #10
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    May 2006
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    Like I've said in similar threads, turning apassion into your job can work for some but probably a lot fewer than instagram or society as whole would make you believe. Aspen, and all mountain towns, are full of people trying to do that and plenty of them end up burnt out and unhappy and hating the thing they used to love. Plus, in my limited experience, many of the people who become ultra-successful and happy following their passion often have a single-minded focus that means other aspects of their lives suffer as a result, like friends, family, etc. All their self-worth and happiness is wrapped up in this one thing/activity and everything else just fades into the background. A workaholic is a workaholic and ditching friends or family or letting those relationships suffer because of a job/passion isn't any better just because the job looks "fun" to most of the rest of us. Life's a balance, we all just have to figure out the balance that works for us.
    "They don't think it be like it is, but it do."

  11. #11
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    Mar 2018
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    My wife quit her well paying engineering job to pursue her passion. Let's just say it's a good thing that I didn't.

  12. #12
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    bragging about your job being your passion is pure elite signalling.

    there are a vanishingly, vanishingly few who can make it work. not the 1%. More like the .00001%.

  13. #13
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    Mar 2011
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    First world problems. Get to work

  14. #14
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    Oct 2002
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    Quote Originally Posted by El Chupacabra View Post
    Trying to make a job into your passion (or vice versa) seems to me to be a good way to destroy your enjoyment of the thing you love doing. That saying about turning a hobby into a job...

    If my job were riding bikes full-time, I'd probably start hating having to ride bikes all the time.
    Maybe worth noting that at the top many jobs feel like a passion, and at the bottom few jobs do.

    Chicken/egg
    focus.

  15. #15
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    Apr 2006
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    I don't know too many people who have a job that fulfills their passion. I struggled really hard after graduating into the recession (I've got at least one old "Why can't I find a job" rant thread on here) and have since made every decision since then in a way that maximizes my income while allowing me to live in the western US. I could make more living in NYC or Boston or London or Singapore, but then I'd be too far from the things I enjoy.

    I'm not particularly passionate about my job. I pretend to care just enough to be labeled as a top performer within the company, but deep down I really don't give a shit about the mission or vision of the company I work for. My job allows me to travel as much as I want to most parts of the world. I have autonomy to prioritize my own work flow and manage a small but very solid team of smart people in the way that I want. My comp is decent.

    Like many on here I try to find meaning through non work related hobbies, but I've had some major curve balls in my personal life in the past year and change that have me questioning what I want to do going forward. Ideally I'd work in something that sets up humanity for a better future like alternative energy but I haven't found a way to break into without going back to school for a PhD in a hard science and taking a pretty serious pay cut.

  16. #16
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    Jan 2010
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    Quote Originally Posted by Danno View Post
    Humans of New York just posted this on facebook, and it echoed many things I have thought about and struggled with over my adult life. Here's the full quote:



    A long time ago I decided that trying to find "job as passion" was a bit of an unattainable fairy tale. While some people do find that -- and I am envious of them -- most of us don't, and if we buy into the societal maxim that we should find it, we're gonna be unhappy. So I decided that the things she says above, having a decent job that allows me to live a decent lifestyle, was the thing to strive for, even if I hoped for more.

    Thoughts?
    Agree, on my first hit trip we started out thinking, man do these guides live the life or what. After seeing what their job entailed for about 4 hours I was thinking, Fuck That. It’s a great way to make me hate skiing, hate my clients, etc etc.

    I talk to high school students about careers periodically and this is one thing I highlight. If you want your job to be your passion you are probably going to have to do without financial security, stability, etc at least for a while. Determine what matters to you before picking a path. If you really don’t want to live on a shoestring budget becoming an Artist, etc probably isn’t a sustainable idea unless you have a trust fund backing you.

  17. #17
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    Sep 2001
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    It has been said that you can't love your job, that it's a lie and impossible.

    I grew up with someone who loved their job as a physics professor.

    Every night, after getting his lectures prepped, he'd get out his research on statistical mechanics and work. Because that really is what he loved to do.

    Yes, he took other positions as Dean of the Graduate School, as Vice Chancellor, parts of which he hated, but eventually returned to being just a professor doing arcane physics research.

    He got his rewards and recognition for his work and continued to compute and make weird combinatorial arguments well into retirement until he really couldn't. Even then, when I visited him in his waning days, he'd be asleep with his notes and calculations on his chest in the recliner, letters from the Nobel college on the wall.

    There were other fanatics in his department that were similarly passionate, absorbed and fascinated by the subjects they studied. Lives of curiosity, investigation, hypothesis, polemics and paradigms. Armies of Einsteins in spirit if not always in achievement. May these folks be lauded.

    Personally, I grew up sort of shell shocked from other events and never really had an intellectual passion. I was however, a ski fiend of the most hysterical sort, skiing every day when I could. I was also supposedly fairly smart. When things at home got too tense and controlling, I left and hitchhiked around, trying to figure out what to do between taking financial aid for a year of college or going to train with the US ski team. After a bunch of thought, I decided that I never wanted to depend on skiing, that I wanted it to be a joy free of constraints and worry, so I went for college instead.

    I flubbed around, got decent grades and eventually became a math major in the freakiest kind of math, algebraic topology. But I wasn't good enough to get into Princeton or UChi for grad school and eventually wrote a PhD thesis at UW in Seattle but quit because I didn't want to move to Ohio or Pennsylvania for a job teaching math at some third rate school. Plus the skiing here r00led and was incognito. Then there was also this girl.

    So I continued to flub around, sort of seat of the pants from doing aerospace and military analysis for a couple of years, then teaching myself how to code in C. Eventually, I got a job messing around at msft where I worked for years, patenting a few things, one of which is the main interprocess communication mechanism for NT/Win32. It was not an unending wad of fun though since virtually everyone else had gone to school for programming and I was completely self taught. There were a lot of people I had to work with who were complete shits too. I ended up hating it there. So my job, while occasionally amusing and sparsely fulfilling, was not my passion.

    Hey life is complex and some people are lucky to find their pro groove. Props to them despite my jealousy. But I've had a lot of fun doing life and that's just how it works out sometimes. Where's my beer?
    Merde De Glace On the Freak When Ski
    >>>200 cm Black Bamboo Sidewalled DPS Lotus 120 : Best Skis Ever <<<

  18. #18
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    Sep 2005
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    Wasatch Back: 7000'
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    I have always thought that the best possible source of income (job) possible is a certified trustafarian
    “How does it feel to be the greatest guitarist in the world? I don’t know, go ask Rory Gallagher”. — Jimi Hendrix

  19. #19
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    Sep 2001
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    No trust fund here but my no job is my passion.

    Did I say that out loud?

  20. #20
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    Aug 2005
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    i'm 32 years in with that same feeling....sweet pension though in 3.

  21. #21
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    Sep 2006
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    I feel like I would have really excelled and had a passion for hunting Buffalo with arrows and spears.

  22. #22
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    Head west young man.
    watch out for snakes

  23. #23
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    Mar 2012
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    The Bull City
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    The more your job/career sucks your soul, the cooler and more fun your leisure time is. I don't mind doing some heavy lifting others higher up the food chain avoid like the plague. As long as I get to work a reasonably regular schedule with decent benefits and some legit FREE TIME when I don't have to worry too much about being dragged back in to a work fiasco on my day/week off I'm good to go..
    Go that way really REALLY fast. If something gets in your way, TURN!

  24. #24
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    Aug 2006
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    8,937
    I hope most have many “passions” and possibly several “jobs,” in broad definitions of the terms. Money is not everything.

    In the world of paid work, following a path of service seems to work well for many. It also seems to require the ability to keep sight of the long view of the service they provide in job.

  25. #25
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    Apr 2006
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    Quote Originally Posted by 4matic View Post
    Easy to change jobs right now even if you are only half ass skilled at anything valuable.
    describe value

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