"You have to do something that you love," is a phrase I often hear uttered when the topic of education and future careers paths comes up. While I think there is quite a bit of wisdom behind choosing to pursue a degree and job that will be able appreciate even after dedicating a very large portion of your time and energy to it day after day, I am not convinced that trying turn your favorite pastime into a career is the wisest choice or that "do what you love" is the best bit of advice to give someone.
Why? Why wouldn't you choose to take the thing you love doing best and turn that into your job? I mean, who wouldn't choose to get paid for doing what they already want to be doing?
Maybe this is a trait unique to me, but I personally find that my interest in and motivation to pursue things drops dramatically when they become something I am supposed to do. It isn't true that I suddenly dislike that which I previously enjoyed simply because it becomes a required task, but often times I feel like a good portion of the joy and interest I have in things drops when a deadline and consequences are attached along with commanding instruction.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a very duty driven person and I think structured responsibilities, assigned tasks, and jobs to fulfill are important. I don't mind them, and I actually believe I perform much better when I am given something to do and a goal to strive for. As long as I can understand the purpose and concept behind the rules I'm given to work with, it is entirely possible for me to function happily and contentedly under a set of restrictions. When left to my own devices for an extended period of time, I tend toward being frustratingly idle and unproductive.
So, it isn't true that some driving sense of rebellion quivers at the thought of having my hobbies regulated and transformed into a form of day to day labor. Instead, I am just keenly aware of the fact that what I am required or supposed to ends up getting exhausting and tedious after a few months of repetition. Even when I enjoy what I'm doing, if I'm expected to not only do it every day but do it to the same level of perfection on each go around, my enthusiasm begins to wane. I'll still do it, and I like to believe that I still do it willingly, but it loses its appeal somewhere around the ten millionth go around.
I am very thankful, for example, that college classes switch every semester. By the time week 12 or 13 rolls around, I'm ready for even my favorite and most engaging classes to be done. My professor may be great, my classmates may be great, the material may be incredibly interesting, but there is something about the idea that I've been working on one class for three plus months that gets rather depressing towards the end. My spurts of enthusiastic productivity become fewer and farther between the closer the finish line gets, and the more I check off my list, the less appealing those last four or five assignments become.
I'll admit, it is 100% a psychological issue, and lacking motivation won't prevent me from crossing the finish or from doing whatever I can to secure A's in my classes. Wavering motivation has not yet shown any sings of crippling my grades or leaving my responsibilities dangerously wanting. Only at my weakest moments do I ever forsake a task entirely, and usually I feel guilty afterwords to the point where I try to go back and amend my laziness as much as possible. My point is merely that the joy and enthusiasm diminishes and deteriorates the longer I am set along a single track, and if that track becomes a long term assignment I am not given the option to simply take a breather and break from the monotony for a while.
This semester I've been told by multiple people that I should be a Theater major, and I've been told by a number of other people that I should pursue philosophy or something based on writing, but as much as I enjoy acting, the theatrical arts, philosophy, logic, and writing, I could never convince myself to make those, or any number of other degrees/career paths, my own. Why? Because they are means of relief for me. They're escapes from the assigned tasks and delegated responsibilities. They're among my sources of entertainment and solace when I need something different. If I were to choose pursuing acting as a degree and ultimately a job, I am pretty convinced that I would end up hating myself and regret my decision immensely on top of being financially unstable simply because the role of acting would lose so much of its appeal as soon as it became something that I had to do and had to do as often as possible or face negative repercussions.
My philosophy homework is usually the last set of assignments I do in my week even though the subject matter ranks among my favorite. Weird as it may seem, I put off doing the homework despite the fact that I am almost guaranteed to enjoy it once I start because the two or three it will take to read the necessary material and answer the assigned questions loom over me as a burden I must shoulder instead of the enjoyable exercise of mental capacity it really should be. A mental block is created that turns answering queries about Plato, Descarte, and the existence of a God away from what would have been an enjoyable pastime into an arduous slog that I must complete if I want to master my course.
At one point in time, I toyed with the idea of pursuing something in the culinary arts, but after looking into the nitty gritty of the field and after speaking with friends of my family that also happen to be professional chefs, I realized that the pleasure I take in cook and baking comes primarily from the freedom I have to experiment, to take my time in the kitchen, to try out random new things based on what just happens to be in the pantry, and on the fact that (if I really want to) I could opt for a bowl of cereal if I really want. The idea of having to crank out dish after dish in a heated (literally and figuratively) environment regardless of whether or not I really feel like cooking seemed less and less appealing to me the more I thought I about it, and thus dreams of being a chef or baker were cast from my mind in light of the fact that something I currently enjoy would likely become something I would dread doing before I even made it out of my college education.
The same goes, I think, for most of the things I enjoy doing in my spare time. A lot of the things I love to do could potentially be turned into a career path if I was willing and interested in dedicated a great deal of time and energy into making it so, but that directly conflicts with the whole idea that my hobbies are an escape. They're what allow me to do what I need to without losing my mind.
That's kind of how I ended up as an Accounting major.
Sometimes I question whether or not I'm really going into a field that I should be. When I hear my music major friends animatedly discuss various composers and musicians, when I hear my cast members for A Midsummer Night's Dream talk about how much they love doing what they do, or really any time anyone I know starts talking about how passionate they are for their degree I can't help but feel like my interest in Accounting is kind of underwhelming.
I'm not getting my degree because the idea of being an Accountant gets me all excited. Crunching numbers doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside oddly enough. While I do find a lot of the stuff I've learned thus far about my future field quite fascinating, and while putting together financial statements and the like can feel like a mentally invigorating puzzle, I highly doubt you'll find a lot of people dreaming of jobs as Accountants in their youth.
I'm not in it for the money either though. Depending on the route you take, I understand that Accountants can make some pretty good money and while I have no intentions of saying no to decent sized paychecks, I could probably pursue more lucrative tracks if that was really my driving motivation.
Instead, I chose Accounting because it interested me, was something fit my skill set, and most important, was something I could see myself doing day in and day out without hating it or totally losing any interest. Like I said before, I don't dislike having things I'm supposed to necessarily, and I feel like what I've learned about Accounting indicates that the job offers to meet me needs for order, structure, and logically methodical tasks while its requirements matched the abilities I have to offer. (Numerous personality quizzes say so :P) As an Accountant I should be able to pay the bills and have some job security such that I will be free to pursue my interests, hobbies, and the things I love at my leisure.
I'll find a way to be happy and content with whatever path I'm given to take, but the more I think the about it the more confident I am that I'm on the right track, because when I come home from a long day of work I don't want my hobbies and passion to be the source of my exhaustion and stress. Instead, I want my job to be something worthwhile and reliable without being all consuming.
I believe my job should give me the ability to do what I love, but I don't what I love to become my job.
Pax
Nice post, Nick. I think you've got a good sense of yourself, and sound reasoning for your plans and pursuits. It's certainly a good thing if you don't "hate" what you're obliged to do for a living, but it is refreshing to have something else that you do for the "love of the game" and not because you "have to."
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