I get paid for the times when it’s hard or when I’m doing interviews or paperwork or documentation or other things that aren’t enjoyable. That’s the hard truth. Choose a better mountain to climb. Having been through both sides of the issue, I can say without a doubt that there are big advantages to doing what you love as well as big advantages to focusing on salary and skills. Trent Hamm is a personal finance writer at TheSimpleDollar.com. There are pressures that will bear down on you. Remember when I mentioned that English was one of my favorite classes in high school? If you’re smart with your income, you can actually plan ahead to retire or partially retire much earlier than the average person, which then enables you to tackle side gigs full time. It’s not exactly what I always dreamed of doing–I always had visions of “writers” going to writing conferences and writing novels and such–but it’s a pretty nice way to do what I love to do. Do something that loves you back. You can do what you love. What really breaks your heart, makes your spirit rumble like an earthquake, blinds you like a might thunderbolt. During those times when writing is fun and loose, I’d do it for free. Instead of stumbling through the week accidentally tapping your talents, it’s getting clear about who you are and what you do best and when you do it best and then planning to replicate that more often. No matter what you do, there are tasks that you won’t enjoy. That life can’t love you back. That’s why the first two principles matter. There are pros and cons behind each path. The Inventory team is rounding up deals you don’t want to miss, now through Cyber Monday. Your way has always been whispering to you. Eventually, I started hiring out the moderation and server management tasks in an effort to continue focusing on what I loved (the writing), but over time that became more than I wanted to manage, so I sold ownership of the site and signed on to do just the part I loved–the writing. Have any of them been runaway successes? Not just in the financial sense, but in the human one. Writer’s block can be an utter nightmare. That may mean taking a gig you don’t really want that pays the bills. Photo courtesy Mario de Armas/design*sponge “Do what you love. That’s what really moves me. You don’t build relationships, accomplish much, learn, challenge, create, grow. That doesn’t mean it’s all perfect. I was charged with the task of organizing data for a group of researchers so that researchers in similar disciplines could easily share data with one another. I’d estimate that I spent several thousand hours trying to earn money from my writing before earning more than a pittance. In both of those cases, I spent my full-time effort on one thing and devoted some of my spare time on a “side gig.” The side gig in both cases was the thing I was most passionate about–solving some very interesting problems in the first case and writing in the second case. Does what you do have any love in it? If you run a business, there may be times that you’re working 20+ hours a day and scraping by on peanuts. I was solving interesting problems every single day and I felt like my work was actually helping others solve interesting problems, too. With any job or business, you often need to … Maybe any love in it. It just doesn’t offer easy entry points like many other career paths offer. Sounds cool. 1.5k members in the UKGreens community. The number one key to doing what you love is to keep your horizons as open as possible and try lots of things, even if they seem completely strange or completely different than what you dreamed about. I started a computer consulting gig. It’s not even wrong. It’s immature (sorry, I said it) to still only love comic books at 40 to the way you do at 14. I didn’t enjoy that quite as much, but I had visions of continuing the work that I love. However, the real reason I keep dabbling is that there is always a risk that I will fall out of love with writing for The Simple Dollar, and when that happens, my current job will become miserable. Some careers for some people are unrewarding. And it needs to be fed and nurtured by doing what loves you back, so you can be supported and held when you fail, not crushed and blamed. I would have perhaps stuck with half-successes, continuing to push them along in mediocrity and never really succeeding. I’ve written mobile apps. Even now, although I do something I love as my full-time job, I dabble in side gigs based on my various passions and interests. Many, many people start following their passion, but don’t have the “grit” to follow through with it until they can earn a decent living at it, which is rarely an immediate thing and usually involves many hours of commitment for low wages. But what moves me in them will be the same. I started investing my spare time in writing. The same thing was true when I was in college. After pulling himself out of his own financial crisis, he founded the site in late 2006 to help others through financially difficult situations; today the site has become a finance, insurance, and retirement resource. I get to write almost every day, which I enjoy. I’ve done all of those things as side gigs since starting The Simple Dollar. Don’t ask your mind. I sometimes find myself really stressing out about deadlines. Love in its authentic form is a verb rather than a noun - in other words, an action you do rather than an emotion you feel - and every individual understands and communicates love differently. Just ask your heart, your inner intution. 0. Never, ever, ever let someone tell you that you can’t possibly do what you love to do and make a decent living. 10 Myths About Love, Exploded 3 leading researchers on why old beliefs could leave you lonely. Another reason is that it requires “grit” and work ethic. It always will be. If you’re a minority, don’t waste your life trying to crack a glass ceiling at a place where it’s really made out of diamond exactly because. But if what you do doesn’t have much love in it, if it’s just wrecking lives, taking advantage of people, how will you feel? I’d even call it normal. My own life has been full of the push-and-pull between these two paths.