Remember back when you were a kid? Y'all would but do things. You never thought to yourself, "What are the relative merits of learning baseball game versus football game?" You merely ran around the playground and played baseball game and football. Y'all built sand castles and played tag and asked lightheaded questions and looked for bugs and dug upward grass and pretended you were a sewer monster.

Nobody told yous to do it, y'all just did it. You were led merely by your curiosityone and excitement.2

And the beautiful thing was, if you lot hated baseball, you merely stopped playing it. At that place was no guilt involved. In that location was no arguing or debate. You either liked it or you lot didn't.

And if you lot loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no second-level analysis of, "Well, is looking for bugs actually what I should be doing with my time equally a child? Nobody else wants to expect for bugs, does that mean at that place'south something incorrect with me? How volition looking for bugs affect my time to come prospects?"iii

There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you merely did it.

"How Exercise I Find My Passion?"

Today, I received approximately the 11,504th e-mail this year from a person telling me that they don't know what to practice with their life. And similar all of the others, this person asked me if I had any ideas of what they could do, where they could start, where to "discover their passion."

And of class, I didn't respond. Why? Because I have no fucking clue. If you don't have whatever thought what to do with yourself, what makes you think some jackass with a website would? I'm a author, non a fortune teller.4

Only more chiefly, what I want to say to these people is this: that'south the whole point—"not knowing" is the whole fucking point. Life is all about non knowing, then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. All of it. And it'southward not going to become any easier just because you found out y'all love your task cleaning septic tanks, or yous scored a dream gig writing indie movies.

The common complaint among a lot of these people is that they need to "discover their passion."

I telephone call bullshit. Yous already found your passion, y'all're just ignoring it. Seriously, y'all're awake 16 hours a day, what the fuck practice you lot do with your fourth dimension? You're doing something, patently. You're talking about something. There'southward some topic or activity or idea that dominates a significant amount of your free fourth dimension, your conversations, your web browsing, and it dominates them without y'all consciously pursuing it or looking for information technology.

It'due south right there in front of you, you lot're just avoiding it. For whatever reason, you lot're avoiding it. You're telling yourself, "Oh well, aye, I dear comic books merely that doesn't count. You can't make money with comic books."

Fuck y'all, have you lot even tried?five

The problem is non a lack of passion for something. The problem is productivity. The trouble is perception. The problem is acceptance.

The problem is the, "Oh, well that'south just not a realistic option," or "Mom and Dad would kill me if I tried to exercise that, they say I should be a doctor," or "That's crazy, you can't buy a BMW with the coin you brand doing that."

The problem isn't passion. It'southward never passion.

It'south priorities.

And even and so, who says you lot demand to make money doing what you lot love? Since when does everyone feel entitled to dearest every fucking second of their job? Really, what is so wrong with working an okay, normal job with some cool people yous similar so pursuing your passion in your gratis fourth dimension on the side? Has the world turned upside-down or is this all of a sudden a novel idea to people?

Look, here's another slap in the face for yous: every job sucks sometimes. There's no such affair as some passionate activity that you lot volition never get tired of, never become stressed over, never mutter about. It doesn't exist. I am living my dream chore (which happened past accident, by the way. I never in a million years planned on this happening; similar a kid on a playground I just went and tried it), and I still hate about 30% of it. Some days more than.6

Again, that'south only life.

Man sitting down with his passion, the saxophone

The event here is, once again, expectations. If you think y'all're supposed to exist working 70-hour work weeks and sleeping in your office similar Steve Jobs and loving every 2d of information technology, you've been watching too many shitty movies. If you think yous're supposed to wake up every single 24-hour interval dancing out of your pajamas because yous become to go to work, then you've been drinking the Kool-Aid. Life doesn't work like that. Information technology's just unrealistic. At that place's a thing most of us demand called balance.

Your Passion Is Right in Front of You

I have a friend who, for the concluding iii years, has been trying to build an online business selling whatever. It hasn't been working. And past not working, I hateful he's non fifty-fifty launching anything. Despite years of "work" and proverb he's going to do this or that, nothing actually always gets done.

What does get done is when ane of his erstwhile co-workers comes to him with a pattern job to create a logo or design some promotional textile for an event. Holy shit, he'southward all over that like flies on fresh cow shit.

And he does a great job! He stays up to 4:00 AM losing himself working on it and loving every 2nd of it.

But then two days later it'due south back to, "Man, I just don't know what I'm supposed to do."

I meet so many people like him. He doesn't need to find his passion. His passion already institute him. He's just ignoring it. He just refuses to believe information technology's feasible. He is just afraid of giving it an honest-to-god try.

It's similar a nerdy kid walking onto a playground and maxim, "Well, bugs are really cool, merely NFL players make more than money, and so I should force myself to play football game every day," and then coming home and complaining that he doesn't like recess.

And that's bullshit. Everybody likes recess. The problem is that he's arbitrarily choosing to limit himself based on some bullshitty ideas he got into his head about success and what he's supposed to do.

Another electronic mail I get all the time is from people wanting communication on how to become a writer.

And my answer is the same: I have no fucking idea.

As a kid, I would write short stories in my room for fun. As a teenager, I would write music reviews and essays nigh bands I loved and and then show them to nobody. Once the net came around, I spent hours upon hours on forums writing multi-page posts virtually inane topics—everything from guitar pickups to the causes of the Iraq War.

I never considered writing as a potential career. I never even considered it a hobby or passion. To me, the things I wrote about were my passion: music, politics, philosophy. Writing was only something I did because I felt similar it.

And when I had to go looking for a career I could fall in love with, I didn't have to look far. In fact, I didn't have to expect at all. It chose me, in a manner. It was already in that location. Already something I was doing every twenty-four hours, since I was a child, without even thinking well-nigh it.

Because hither's another point that might make a few people salty: If you lot take to look for what you lot're passionate almost, then you're probably not passionate almost it at all.

If you're passionate about something, it will already experience similar such an ingrained part of your life that you lot will have to be reminded by people that information technology's non normal, that other people aren't like that.

Information technology didn't occur to me that writing two,000-word posts on forums was something nobody else considered fun. Information technology never occurred to my friend that designing a logo is something that most people don't find like shooting fish in a barrel or fun. To him, it's so natural that he tin't even imagine it being otherwise. And that'due south why it's probably what he really should be doing.

A child does not walk onto a playground and say to herself, "How do I observe fun?" She just goes and has fun.7

If you accept to look for what you lot enjoy in life, so y'all're non going to enjoy anything.

And the real truth is that you already savor something. You already enjoy many things. You're but choosing to ignore them.