Should you follow your passion?
How I've lightly stalked mine
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I’ve always found the received wisdom about jobs and passion confusing:
Follow your passion. By doing a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.
But also remember that your job will never love you back.
Still, you should follow your passion because passion is what it takes to succeed.
Actually, don’t follow your passion—it’ll just turn the thing you love into a job.
The only wisdom is from experience
That’s the thing about received wisdom. It’s all so black and white, of course it winds up contradicting itself. Actual wisdom, as in from real life experience, is more nuanced and more reliable—if you listen to it.
Historically, I haven’t been very good at that, but today I’m going to try. Read on for my wisdom regarding work and passion. Feel free to debate me in the comments on whether any of this is actually “wise.”
Writing has been my passion since childhood. In elementary school, I answered the assignment “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with a picture of myself seated in front of the computer, long hair spilling down to the floor. Presumably because I was so invested in my craft, I couldn’t bother to get it cut.
In college, I studied creative writing, which, in my world, meant sitting at the library with a banana, a loosie, and a blank laptop screen. Senior year, having failed to produce the Great American Novel and faced with the obligation to actually grow up and be something, I told a classmate in my workshop that the worst fate would be to work in a cubicle.
It’s okay to roll your eyes. I am. It’s not as if I had much direct experience with a cubicle. At that point in my life, I’d mostly worked in childcare and retail. I’d had exactly one short-lived office job, and it was in my dad’s office, so not exactly a fair test.
As I see it now, in elementary school I had actual wisdom: I did something, learned I enjoyed it, and decided to do it more. In college, I was stuck on some received wisdom about how to sound cool, probably derived from the slacker youth culture that prevailed during my 90s childhood.
Is it any wonder that in elementary school I churned out stories like a happy little elf, while in college I stared at a blank screen? When you’re focused on how you look to others, it’s near impossible to let yourself go in the way that’s necessary to create.
Following your passion isn’t always glorious
I wound up graduating the year of the financial crisis and somehow, with my creative writing major, got a job offer at an investment research firm. The hiring manager warned me that it was very dry and uncreative, so, sensing cubicles ahead, I declined. I worked a bunch of gigs over the summer until I managed to land an internship at a newspaper in the fall.
I guess you could say I followed my passion. But it wasn’t particularly romantic. The internship entailed uploading game photos to the paper’s prep sports section. I also sat in a cubicle. Still, this was fine with me because, with the world deep in a recession, I’d developed a new passion for being financially independent.
There’s a lesson here that I forget every time I open up Instagram to see a post from someone who’s quit their corporate job to teach yoga on the beach. I look at their perfect tan and think to myself, Jebus, should I do that? Maybe I’m wasting my One Wild and Precious Life!
But those posts only show so much. Following your passion can be very mundane, such as when I’m updating my spreadsheet of novel queries, or formatting story files to submit to a publication. Even beach yoga influencers must contend with spotty internet, faulty GPS, or microplastics in the sand.
It’s okay to feel meh about your job
I’ve had approximately 528 jobs since that internship. A few I’ve loved, a few I’ve loathed, and many I’ve been pretty meh on. At times I’ve felt bad about this—again, because I tell myself that I’m wasting my life. Some would say I’m just a millennial, raised on the myth that work should provide fulfillment. Either way, it’s not doing any good to feel bad about feeling meh.
I’m not saying that if you hate your job you should ignore those feelings. Probably you should move on. But no need to get down on yourself if your job is just a job, not something you love so much that you feel you “never work a day in your life.”
I’m pretty sure that adage is bunk. I have friends who are very passionate about their work, and they would tell you that they are working HARD and that there are certain aspects of their job that they dislike or even dread.
There’s passion outside work
All my jobs have been writing-adjacent: journalist, copywriter, content marketer/strategist. Rather than fully follow my passion, it’s more like I’ve lightly stalked it by dating every one of its friends.
Still, at the end of the day, I’m in favor of following your passion. I just mean, like, after work hours by “end of the day.” Har har.
Seriously, though, when passion hasn’t manifested at my job, I try to cultivate it elsewhere: relationships, hobbies, volunteering, the feeling when the sun hits my skin as soon as I exit my office’s arctic a/c. Why not? What the hell else is there to do in this life?
Yes, a job you love seems ideal, but why let that ideal rob you of enjoying another configuration where you explore your passion elsewhere?
Who knows where you might discover it? Let yourself be surprised. For instance, for me, I did not expect that having a baby, I would find myself thinking, This might be the best part of my life. This adorable tiny person consistently smiles at my tired old face. I’ve even thought to myself, Maybe writing will only ever be a hobby, and that’s not bad at all. To have people and a hobby I love.
The experience of taking care of a baby has also brought into relief the fact that some of the pressure I feel to make my passion my job—or my job my passion, or whatever—comes from the idea that money is necessary to legitimize spending time doing something. Like, if I’m not getting paid, then I’m just a flighty little fool cosplaying at her laptop. But I don’t get paid to take care of my baby, and it’s the realest job I’ve ever had. Also, what better reason to do something than because you care about it?
Passion is a practice
Lately the baby is figuring out how to crawl. He pushes up on this palms so that he’s in a baby plank, then starts to crunch his knees up under him. He flicks his tongue out with the effort, but this is the closest he comes to showing frustration. I’m not sure he even knows that he’s trying to crawl. He’s just doing what’s in front of him.
I want to channel this energy. Instead of focusing on an external outcome—a job title, a company, a publication, a book deal—why not enjoy the pursuit? “Follow your passion” is the advice, not “have your passion.”
Sorry to end all “it’s the journey, not the destination.” That’s just received wisdom, right? Apparently, it’s also true, or at least some studies show that when people think of passion as something developed over time, rather than something fixed or pre-formed, they’re less likely to become frustrated by obstacles (such as a day job) that get in the way. They’re more likely to keep at it.
This is all a work in progress
In writing this long solemn monologue, I realized I’ve gone from a 90s-inspired college slacker to a hustle-era gig worker to a post-great resignation mom questioning if work is really the path to fulfillment and money the only way to validate her existence. Whether my transformation reflects the cultural moment or simply my life stage, I think it all just points to the fact that I’m always in process when it comes to passion and work. This post contains my thoughts and feelings as of today. I’ll probably see things differently tomorrow, next week, and next year. That’s how wisdom works.
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