The Challenge in Following Your Passion

Work

Sep 15

When I was in school, I've heard many times, "pursue your passion and the money will follow." I believed it. My parents worried for my interest in arts and writing and encouraged me to do it on the side, but I insisted. I was a straight-A student, but left-brained subjects like business and science felt like parched deserts when I yearned for watery depths -- creativity, arts, storytelling. So I followed my passion and went into writing. But after a couple of years, I realized I wasn't passionate enough about fiction writing to be a novelist, and my traditional college education didn't prepare me to work as a writer in the real world. I halfheartedly finished my degree and did office jobs for some years, all the while trying to find my "purpose."

Following our passion is easier said than done, otherwise we'd all be in jobs we love, right? Some people get lucky, and their passion happens to belong to a society-approved career path with its own degree track and job description. I envy people who want to pioneer scientific discoveries, invent new gadgets, and start their own businesses. I marvel at artists whose personalities are so wired for creativity that they can't imagine anything else. Then there's me, who rarely feels strongly about anything and who can't find a job I don't end up hating.

It took many years to realize that I had to create my own path. No existing career path can reflect my uniqueness.

Career paths exist because they were paved by others who fulfilled certain needs. Those paths created a demand, and more were invited along the path to fulfill the needs of employers. Professional academic programs often have business liaisons advising them on the changing needs of employers. It can be convenient if our passions fit these existing paths, but sometimes they don't. Then we're left with the task of either fitting in and never quite being happy or forging our own path.

Following our passion is hard. Even if we have a degree in something we love doing, the world of work is a completely different beast. Employers don't care about what we love, they care about whether what we do makes them money. Sometimes the two intersect, and they're happy to let you go in a direction you love if it has the potential to line their pockets. As an accountant, I know full well that the bottom line is what matters in our capitalistic society. I've been the enforcer of budgets and giver of bad news to people who wanted to do creative things. Our passions are often going to be in conflict with what makes money.

If our passions (if we even know what they are) aren't obvious money makers, they can carry the weight of our desire to prove ourselves. We ache to show others that we aren't unrealistic dreamers, that we're justified in pursuing our passions because we can make money doing it. If we're not in school anymore and not supported by our families, following our passion is a huge risk that takes time, energy, and money. It may mean starting a new business while working full time. It may mean taking night classes to learn a new skill. It may mean quitting our job and running down our savings, or borrowing money from family to get by. If ours is the path less taken, there's even more uncertainty whether it will provide for you. All that weight of having to prove our worthiness can kill the creativity we need to actually forge the path. No wonder it's often easier to stay in a job we hate than take the risk of creating our own path.

I admire the people who have forged their own unique paths and appear so confident about what they do. Perhaps they just hide their fears better, or perhaps they've already worked through their fears. Those who create their own paths face a great dilemma. We're social creatures who crave approval from others. We tend to want to do the things that will get us the approval. But to create our own path, we have to be willing to be different. For the pioneer, there are no welcoming committees, no academic programs, no career fairs.

Doing something different can be terrifying, especially if we've been trained to follow prescribed paths rather than discover our own. But there comes a time when the ache in our hearts for something more beats louder than the fear of ridicule. We have to dare speak our unique voices. If everyone already agrees, our voice would be another generic drop in the ocean.

It's not only scary to do something intellectually different, but also emotionally different. When I first thought about starting a bookkeeping business, I dismissed the idea because I couldn't see myself in the way most accountants marketed themselves — the dark colors, the squared-off logos, the serious tone. I thought that's how you had to market accounting services. Then I heard a talk by Danetha Doe on creating your niche in accounting by infusing it with other interests. I realized that I could market myself differently and target a specific type of clients. Accounting for Creative People was born. Sometimes we need to hear from others who have done it already that it's okay to do things differently.

It is also hard, as a writer, to be authentic and continually write about what I struggle with and what I'm learning. Intellectually, I know that authenticity and vulnerability are attractive and disarming. People who dive in and get dirty are often just as impactful teachers as people who study others from a distance and formulate theories. But in practice, being authentic in "public" is hard. I've spent a lifetime hiding who I am, since I have weird interests and love working on myself in ways most people avoid. My earliest attempts at blog writing were far more stilted and serious than they are now, even though it is still a work in progress.

Following our passion can be a scary, challenging, and amazing journey. It involves forging a path that didn't exist before, and one which few would encourage or congratulate us for our choice. I don't know anyone who has tried to do something unique without experiencing fear, even if they don't show it on the surface. It may not be for everybody, and it's definitely a privileged position to risk time and money for passion. As hard as the journey can be, it has been worth it to create the work that finally works for me.