Going for broke?

Again with all due respect to Mr. Jobs, an eminent person I follow on Twitter had this to say (with which I agree, to a certain extent):

Everyone is lauding Steve Jobs' exhortation to do what you love. But guess what happens to a society in which we all do that?

We become organic patchouli farmers and documentary film makers for the two weeks it takes society to collapse. Then we starve and die.

So let's have a big round of applause for everyone who is NOT doing what he loves. Thanks, people. We need you. Keep not doing it.

As for me, I have a family and a day job and writing falls smack, dab in between those two priorities in my life. I need the job to help the family and my family is everything to me. Everything. I'd give up the job in a heartbeat if I could, but, until then, I have to work around it to get the writing done.

CaroGirl said:

Again with all due respect to Mr. Jobs, an eminent person I follow on Twitter had this to say (to which I agree, to a certain extent):

Everyone is lauding Steve Jobs' exhortation to do what you love. But guess what happens to a society in which we all do that?

We become organic patchouli farmers and documentary film makers for the two weeks it takes society to collapse. Then we starve and die.

So let's have a big round of applause for everyone who is NOT doing what he loves. Thanks, people. We need you. Keep not doing it.

As for me, I have a family and a day job and writing falls smack, dab in between those two priorities in my life. I need the job to help the family and my family is everything to me. Everything. I'd give up the job in a heartbeat if I could, but, until then, I have to work around it to get the writing done.

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I disagree, actually. Not everyone wants to be an artist or something that's considered equally unpractical. Lots of people like working so called regular jobs. And lots of people like having hobbies that are separate from their work. It doesn't mean people shouldn't do what they love, but doing what you love doesn't just apply to your job. It's about your life. That's where I think the disconnect comes. As long as you're doing what you love in your life, that's what matters.

It is best to aim at doing something you enjoy for work as well, though, if it's something you're going to spend a lot of time doing. That's just common sense. I only have so many hours a day and so many days in a lifetime. If I choose to spend the majority of them doing something I dislike, what sense does that make? My mother was a daycare teacher at a center for low income families. Did she make a lot of money? Nope, but I'm glad she did what she did because it made her happy, it made the kids happy, and it made me happy to grow up seeing her happy despite having to worry about money sometimes.

The fact is a lot of people think certain things are what they'd love doing for a living because they're glamorizing them, but would actually end up going back to whatever they're doing now if they actually tried spending their lives pursuing things like acting or being artists in Paris or whatnot. For instance, there are wannabe writers who don't actually love writing but want to be Stephen King. For them being a writer wouldn't be doing what they love at all.

Personally I think when you find what you actually love that is what you should do, whether it's your profession or not. Okay. That was a bit of a ramble. Sorry.

virtue_summer said:

Personally I think when you find what you actually love that is what you should do, whether it's your profession or not. Okay. That was a bit of a ramble. Sorry.

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depends on the person. I get asked all the time why I am not a chef, brewmaster, or winemaker.

Because I enjoy all three. And as soon as I turn them into work, that will likely stop.


sometimes you do what you can tolerate, because what you love would be less loveable if you had to pull your ass out of bed every day at 6am to do it and you had to do it five days a week.

sometimes you do what you can tolerate because what you love pays about as well as being the creepy guy who sorts aluminum cans out of the trash at the park and drives a pickup apparently held together mostly by determination and baling wire.


If you can love what you do and it pays a living wage and everything else, more power to you and that is unquestionably a good thing. but it doesn't always work that way, and yes, sometimes you do what is practical as a career, and what you love as a sideline.

CaroGirl said:

Again with all due respect to Mr. Jobs, an eminent person I follow on Twitter had this to say (with which I agree, to a certain extent):

Everyone is lauding Steve Jobs' exhortation to do what you love. But guess what happens to a society in which we all do that?

We become organic patchouli farmers and documentary film makers for the two weeks it takes society to collapse. Then we starve and die.

So let's have a big round of applause for everyone who is NOT doing what he loves. Thanks, people. We need you. Keep not doing it.

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The thing is, Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs. A creative genius.

If people are going to live by Jobs' motto, are they prepared for the possibility that they are not Steve Jobs, Martin Scorcese or JK Rowling? What if their real life is the one where they aren't rich and famous? What if you never achieve a publishing deal?

Also life is -as they say - in the cracks, our dreams change. This time last year I was trying to be a crime fiction writer, expecting to pursue an academic career in English Literature. Twelve months later I'm writing historical thrillers, I'm taking a second degree in Classical Studies so I can take an MA in the Roman Epic. I would love to be the boss for the Hadrian's Wall Trust, as much as I want my Roman thrillers to be published.

Don't be inflexible to life. Life is what happens when you're not expecting it.

Christopher McCandless famously adhered with body and soul to Steve Jobs' espoused ideal.

He wound up starving to death in the Alaska wilderness in 1992, alone, trapped, leaving behind a desperate note pleading for rescue.

He also treated his parents and a lot of other people like crap in his egomaniacal narcissistic pursuit of his ideal.

(See Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild for details.)

caw

Hence, our plea for the lovers and the dreamers to have a fallback plan. Oh, yeah, and understand their true limitations.

IceCreamEmpress said:

How dare you? This is possibly the most hateful comment I have ever seen on this site.

As someone with a life-limiting chronic illness who works hard to get through every day, accomplish my goals, and be of service to others--and I know I am not the only person on this site in this situation, and probably nowhere near the person who is in the most challenging health situation--I find this callous beyond belief.

People who are experiencing health challenges need health care. Not getting health care doesn't make them morally stronger, it just makes them dead sooner.

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I don't think James meant his comment as you took it. I see nowhere where he implied that having or not having health care has to do with moral strength. But, things were very different many years ago.

In the 60's and 70's, I can remember my dad being in poor health due to alcoholism and work accidents and us not having extra money for health care, thus he did not go to the doctor when he should have. Yet, he never called in sick and pushed himself way beyond what he should of. Shoot, even when he had a bleeding ulcer and had to have an operation, he didn't want to go through with it due to having to pay the big bill. When mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer at 42 (died nine months later), they had no health insurance. Yet, anytime us kids or mom had to go to the doctor, he made sure we got there.

I think the thing is that back before people got healthcare benefits from work or bought their own insurance, that people would just "bite the bullet" and make themselves work through the health problems, no matter how severe they are. Not good.

Follow your intuition and your heart and become who you want to become.

I think when it comes down to it, it's very difficult, if not downright impossible, to have everything. So you have to decide where your priorities lie, and what will make you happy.

I realized a while ago that while writing is one of the most important things to me, that doesn't necessarily mean it's what I should do as a career. In fact, some of what I love about it, like how it's a great reward and stress-reliever for when I'm done studying or working, would sort of be ruined by making it a career. Realizing that helped me realize that I can have different areas of my life that I'm passionate about.

On the other hand, I'm studying engineering, and I find it fascinating. I really do, and I feel like I could be reasonably happy working in that field. But honestly? I don't have a great amount of passion for it. And I know that, probably more than lack of ability (though I'm certainly not a genius, either), will keep me from ever becoming the next Steve Jobs. But I'm at a point now where I'm not sure that's a bad thing, if the trade-off is that I'll be able to devote energy to the things I love.

But I'm also keeping my options open, too. Like others have mentioned, it pays to be flexible in life. Maybe you can't have everything exactly like you want it, but I think you can usually find ways to live out your dreams, regardless.

DancingMaenid said:

Maybe you can't have everything exactly like you want it, but I think you can usually find ways to live out your dreams, regardless.

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So well said.

Filigree said:

Also, bluntly, America is no place to be poor, with any kind of health problem. You need to be physically healthy. Or have a fair amount of money socked away (I'd say at least 20K), just in case you have a health emergency. Many bankruptcies are initially triggered by high health-care costs, even with insurance.

!

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Or even middle class. Our daughter was born in September of 2009 with six undetected heart defects, all of them very severe. She had her first heart surgery at 15 days old and the second at 6 months. We had "good" insurance but we still had nearly $30K of medical bills (high deductible, out of pocket max, uncovered Rx costs, etc) that we had to pay.

Let me tell you. Being middle class and having health problems is almost worse than being poor in some ways. No Medicaid. No CHIP. No WIC to help with food costs. No Rx grants. It was an awful, awful time for us and we're still recovering.

Thankfully we're Dave Ramsey followers and had only one student loan and a mortgage when kiddo was born. We were able to raid my retirement money, the second car fund we'd been piling up and cut back big time on expenses (thank you couponing stockpile of razors and shampoo and soap!). Breastfeeding and cloth diapering brought our baby costs down too.

I wrote like a fiend in hospital waiting rooms and next to the kiddo's isolette. I sold a crap ton of my erotica and erotic romance. DH worked so much overtime we saw him maybe 5 days in a month.

So...anywho. Follow your bliss but be aware there are some big drawbacks to living hand-to-mouth. We live a very comfortable middle class existence but one sick baby nearly put us in the poor house. Only our frugal lifestyle saved our asses. If you don't have savings to fall back on in an emergency, you're really screwed.

Susan Littlefield said:

I don't think James meant his comment as you took it. I see nowhere where he implied that having or not having health care has to do with moral strength. But, things were very different many years ago.

In the 60's and 70's, I can remember my dad being in poor health due to alcoholism and work accidents and us not having extra money for health care, thus he did not go to the doctor when he should have. Yet, he never called in sick and pushed himself way beyond what he should of. Shoot, even when he had a bleeding ulcer and had to have an operation, he didn't want to go through with it due to having to pay the big bill. When mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer at 42 (died nine months later), they had no health insurance. Yet, anytime us kids or mom had to go to the doctor, he made sure we got there.

I think the thing is that back before people got healthcare benefits from work or bought their own insurance, that people would just "bite the bullet" and make themselves work through the health problems, no matter how severe they are. Not good.

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Yes, before health care, if you were sick and not wealthy you just bit the bullet and worked until you dropped because there was no other choice. There is a certain smarmy sentiment, expressed by folks like James, that this was a more ennobling and virtuous age.

It's a crap sentiment, this glossing of those marvelous times when there was no social safety net so everyone just worked, darn it, and look at the great works produced by starving artists and people "poor in health" and "broken in body."

Reality: Most of those people just died, still poor, still broken, and completely unremembered. Yes, there were a few exceptions whom we remember because they were exceptions. (Most of them still lived pretty miserable and relatively short lives.)

James's insinuation was that poor, unhealthy people accomplished more back when there was no public assistance than the lazy loafers do now.

Disabled people, sick people, broken people, are not lazier and less accomplished now that they have a slightly better chance of living lives that aren't nasty, brutish, and short. But there are always people working hard to go back to the good old days of poorhouses or ice floes.

Amadan said:

Yes, before health care, if you were sick and not wealthy you just bit the bullet and worked until you dropped because there was no other choice. There is a certain smarmy sentiment, expressed by folks like James, that this was a more ennobling and virtuous age.

It's a crap sentiment, this glossing of those marvelous times when there was no social safety net so everyone just worked, darn it, and look at the great works produced by starving artists and people "poor in health" and "broken in body."

Reality: Most of those people just died, still poor, still broken, and completely unremembered. Yes, there were a few exceptions whom we remember because they were exceptions. (Most of them still lived pretty miserable and relatively short lives.)

James's insinuation was that poor, unhealthy people accomplished more back when there was no public assistance than the lazy loafers do now.

Disabled people, sick people, broken people, are not lazier and less accomplished now that they have a slightly better chance of living lives that aren't nasty, brutish, and short. But there are always people working hard to go back to the good old days of poorhouses or ice floes.

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Having watched my dad go through the stuff he did without healthcare, and as a young adult being poor with no healthcare at all, I read James' statement in a different way. But, I think we're all getting off track too.

DancingMaenid said:

Maybe you can't have everything exactly like you want it, but I think you can usually find ways to live out your dreams, regardless.

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A thousand times this.

Don't be inflexible to life. Life is what happens when you're not expecting it.

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So very true. And, often we think the grass is so much greener on the other side when it is not.