Doing What You Love

Doing what you love does not mean that you'll love every second of it. It doesn't mean that you'll automatically be happy with your career and that your work will feel like play every single day. It doesn't mean that you'll be rich and wealthy but it also doesn't mean you'll be poor and destitute. Doing what you love is not learning to like certain aspects of a job that is far below your true capabilities. It isn't a career that you drop after a year or two because you got bored, though it can be a career that you drop a year or two after you got too scared to continue.

Nobody said it was easy to do what you love and nobody is going to hand you the exact life that you want on a silver platter. If you choose to do work that you are passionate about, there will be times that you feel like quitting. I've had to work constantly on aspects of writing I don't like, such as copyediting and formatting for self-publishing purposes. When I feel the desire to give up and to take on something easier like a full-time job, I remind myself that sharing my stories with the world is part of my purpose here and that to get to that point, I'll need to do some of the dirty work.

If you think that you feel a sense of fulfillment when you finish a long project at that job you hate, imagine how you'll feel if you complete a project related to something that you love. There's nothing quite like completing a book for me, making that first sales, getting that first positive review and receiving my first e-mail from an admirer of the book. It was worth all of the days I spent wondering if my unpaid hours of writing would amount to something. It was worth the hours I spent editing my own work and begging my friends to help me create a cover from scratch. It was worth the hundreds of hours I spent on my blog, unintentionally but fortunately creating publicity for myself and my writing.

When you work for a company you don't care about, the hours you work there are hours you can't get back. I receive dividends in terms of ideas and personal fulfillment for each of the hours I put into my passion. If you aren't doing what you love, you are wasting your time and you're wasting the time of the rest of the world. Get to doing something that you love as soon as possible for as many hours a day as you can afford, financially and spiritually. 

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