When we were teenagers we often heard the phrase:
If you do what you love you’d never have to work a single day in your life
I find it to be so wrong and misleading.
Misleading
The phrase misleads you into thinking that if you don’t love what you do all the times you haven’t really found your purpose. I love programming and it is the career for me, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t hard days or day where I would rather do something else. If you look at it only through the lens of that phrase you might think that maybe you haven’t found your true path yet. Truth is that even if you love something doing it day after day turns it into a job and doing it as a job is totally different than doing it as a hobby in your free time. I’m not saying that it ruins it. It didn’t for me, and it shouldn’t for you, unless you push yourself too hard all the times.
Work to live
Work is work. And work shouldn’t be all you are. It’s shameful that so many people identify themselves only in their work. Your craft gives you pride, but you’re not only a salesperson/bartender/programmers. Your life way more than that (if it’s not it should be). So stop identifying only as one. That doesn’t mean not to identify as your job title, but you shouldn’t identify ONLY as such.
Takeaways
- You can absolutely love what you do and want to do it fully. But it is still working.
- You have joy in your craft. But it is still working.
- You don’t want to trade your job for any other job in the world. But it is still working.
- You’re proud of what you do. But it is still working.