Do what you love?!

Is the narrative of do what you love at work something we should strive for at all costs, or just a modern utopia?

I’ve just come across a fantastic piece by Mark Manson (the author of one of my all-time favourite books, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”). In short, in a text on his website Mark points out:

Who says you have to earn a living from what you love doing?! Let’s normalise the idea that it’s possible to have a 9 to 5 job that has nothing directly to do with your passion, yet still pays your bills and leaves you free to do what you love in your spare time.

Click the image to read Mark’s original text.

That gave me an “AHA” moment.

Do What You Love at All Costs?!

The idea of following your dreams is not wrong in itself. Quite the opposite. The whole “movement” behind the idea that you shouldn’t slog away your whole life, unhappy in your job, but get moving so you can be happier, is great.

But like every good idea, this one has changed its original shape and grown into a monster that attacks us from every corner of popular culture and screams at us: “What do you mean, you’re not making millions doing what you love most in the world, with a permanent smile on your face? What’s wrong with you? So many people have made it…”

In an ideal world, or at least in that imaginary one full of Instagram gurus and successful dreamers, “do what you love” is an imperative from which, it seems, there is no escape.

But is that really so?

Hats off to the people who have managed to bring their “dreams” and reality together and make a living from them.

But hats off just as much to everyone whose reality doesn’t match this imposed ideal.

Day Job vs. Dream Job

Yes, writing is what I love most in the world.

But no, writing doesn’t have to pay my bills.

Because my writing isn’t conditioned by and burdened with putting bread on the table, it is free, and it can live freely and breathe freely.

Because there is something liberating in the fact that doing what you love doesn’t per se have to mean only “earning” from what you love.

Let’s normalise the idea that it is perfectly fine to work a 9 to 5 job that doesn’t have much to do with your dreams, but that, on the other hand, lets other qualities of yours come to the fore.

Yes, I work 9 to 5, in IT, in an office job, even though I’m a creative soul. And I’m not the only one!

But that has made it possible for me to write what I love, what I feel, without thinking about and worrying whether it will bring me likes or clicks, or enough money to live comfortably from writing alone.

Writing for the sake of writing and for the joy of it, writing that is free and unconditional.

You Are Your Job?!

I am the first to champion the idea that everyone should do exactly what suits them and brings them some kind of satisfaction in life, whether it’s money, a good working environment, the work itself or something else entirely. And of course it’s not possible to find all of that in every job.

But what if, in our “day job”, besides the money, we find a new, different part of ourselves? A part that was crouching in the dark, pushed aside by the ideal of a “creative life”? And why shouldn’t we fit those two parts of ourselves together, without guilt or feeling less worthy?

Because we are not our job or our title! Yet very often that’s exactly what we are reduced to.

Just think about it: when you meet someone, at some point they will surely ask you what you do. And your answer, I’m absolutely sure, will be your job title or your degree.

And that is exactly how we define ourselves socially: “I am my job.”

But we’re not!

We are all so much more than that.

Yes, it is possible for me to be a writer, and a mum, and a bibliophile, and a feminist, and a wife, and an IT consultant. All of that is me. And each of those roles brings out certain qualities and skills of mine.

That’s why I refuse to define myself as just one thing, and I refuse to accept the idea of an “ideal” anything, in this case, an ideal job.

Apart from being a creative soul who loves writing and reading more than anything in the world, I also adore new technologies, I enjoy teaching people something they didn’t know before, showing them an easier and more efficient way to get something done, and in general I love helping people.

And there you go: in the job I’m doing now, exactly those qualities of mine have come to the fore.

And even though I never “dreamed” of this job, I have been doing it with a real smile on my face for more than a year now.

I Write Because I Love It, Not Because I Have To!

As for writing in particular, history has shown again and again that many writers, men and women, either already had the means for a normal life or did some other job and wrote in their free time. I find that idea very inspiring, and it takes the pressure off.

The idea of the writer (the artist) who, even when hungry, always puts their creative work before their existential needs is, in the end, just that: a romantic idea.

The reality is very different. Nobody can be creative on an empty stomach, or without a roof over their head, freezing.

Virginia Woolf, who changed the way this whole issue is seen, said as early as 1929, in one of the most important works of literature:

“Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. […] And when each of us has five hundred [pounds] a year and a room to ourselves; when we are accustomed to freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think” (Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”)

For a long time I, too, was seduced by the thought that my worth lies in “how successful I am at what I do, at what I’ve always wanted to do”. And of course I didn’t feel good.

I worked actively to make it happen, but so far it hasn’t. And of course that made me seriously doubt myself, my creativity and my abilities.

And then I discovered that I’m not the only one, and that it’s completely okay to have a day job you enjoy that has nothing directly to do with what you have “always wanted to do”.

On the one hand, hey, I’m only thirty-something. (No, not everything in your life has to happen before your 30th birthday!)

On the other hand, if something hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t mean it never will.

And if it doesn’t happen, that’s okay too.

Does that mean I should stop writing?

No, I’m not for killing dreams and corporate exploitation, but I am for shattering illusions!

Only when I freed myself and my writing from that kind of pressure, that it has to succeed and that I have to live from it, did I start breaking free from the chains I had put on myself.

Because everything you have to do carries a certain weight and loses its original magic.

You are no less of a creative, a writer, an artist if you earn your bread some other way.

Which is also what Elizabeth Gilbert stresses in her brilliant book about creativity and writing:

“He didn’t quit his day job to follow his dream; he just folded his dream into his everyday life.” (Elizabeth Gilbert, “Big Magic”, 2015, p. 82)

Fight for your dreams, always.

But don’t let your life slip by in regret because you’re not living them the way others expect them to look.

Warmly,

S-Mama