...because I am interested in so many different things, and because when I stop to think about what I really want to do with my life, all I can hear in my head are the voices of everyone else (friends, family, guidance counselors, teachers, professors, advisors, etc) telling me what they think I should do. It’s hard to isolate my own feelings about it, because for so long I have been trying to find a passion for what other people want me to have a passion for, for whatever reasons they have, which for the most part, are well-intentioned.
Right now I have a very good, stable career. There are many people who are envious of my position and all of the benefits that come with it. And while I cannot say that I am unhappy with my position, I know that it’s not what I was meant to be doing. I’m good at what I do, but I don’t have a passion for it, the way I see other people have a passion for it. Honestly, I could take it or leave it. And I am fully aware that a lot of people would kill to have a job that they could “take or leave,” and believe me, I am grateful and I know how fortunate I am, but I feel like I am cheating myself out of finding out what I really should be doing.
I know that it is very rare for people to get paid to do something they absolutely love, and I know most people work as a means to an end, and that’s just the way things are for some of us. I am okay with that. I don’t mind working just to pay the bills. What I do mind is working to pay the bills, without doing something I love in my free time, as a hobby. Let’s say I want to get into acting. Now I realize that the odds are stacked pretty high against me that I will ever become a talented and famous movie, tv, or Broadway star. I realize I probably won’t make much – if any – money from it. But I would be satisfied just doing it for fun. The problem is, I don’t know what I want to do with my life yet…..
Not to mention, the job I have right now really requires a lot of time and energy and effort, and quite frankly, hard work. The career I have right now is not something where you come in right when your contract says you start, you leave whenever you are supposed to leave, you never bring work home, and the second you walk out the door, you forget about work until the next day when you walk in the door. My job is more like a vocation. Sometimes you have to stay late, most days you have to go in early, a lot of times you don’t eat lunch, and you always have to bring work home. None of this would bother me, except I don’t really love love love my job, I don’t really have a passion for it. So where it would still be work regardless, since I know it’s not what I was meant to do, it becomes extra hard to do all that.
I try not to talk to people about this, because instead of people trying to understand what I’m saying (believe me, I’m not looking for sympathy, I know how lucky I am), they just tell me I should just be grateful that I have a good job that pays well and has good benefits, and that work is called “work” for a reason, it wasn’t meant to be fun, and that wanting to do something I love is a naive expectation and asking too much.
But I don’t want to cheat myself out of figuring out for myself what I really really want to do with my life. Like I said, I would do it as a hobby, it’s not like I am even holding out hope that I can make a career out of it. If I had a passion for something, it might make it easier to deal with the job I don’t have a passion for. But I am not sure what it is I was meant to do.
