Why you don’t have to give up your job to do what you like and live the way you want

Leggi in italiano

How many of you get regular offers on their Facebook wall from sponsored posts suggesting a course/method/app/personal coaching that says “How to quit your job and do what you love full-time”?

How many of you have read this year at least once some post about “How I’ve managed to quit my 9am to 6pm job to travel”?

I see raised hands, I hear voices saying “oh gosh, me me me”.

I would actually love to talk to you about this and this is exactly what I would wonder about with you.
Do we really have to give up our job or everything we have learned over the years of our career to do “what we love”?
More importantly, do so many people really believe that they will be at ease doing what they love also for a living and then get money in return?

I don’t think so, it’s not always necessary. I’ll tell you why and feel free to tell me what you think about it in the comments if you like.

You love “what you love” also because it’s not your work.

museum of illusions, Vilnius

As I often said to my students during the courses on how to work as a blogger and web content writer, the first way to turn a hobby into a job is to start treating and perceiving it at such.
The good news is that the “working” attitude and therefore a higher sense of duty, as well as a lot of studying on the topic do pay off in the long term and you can see the results.
The bad news is that even the most unrestrained and motivating passion can slowly decrease and sometimes bring about tensions when it starts giving you the usual work troubles, that is to say it can become in some respects even similar to the job you want to give up.

If you quit your job, whatever it is, to try living out of your passion/wannabe profession, you should be aware that the latter is gonna be, sometimes, less interesting. To sum up, if it’s a job there’s gonna be less passion.
Are you sure it is worth giving up this “other” space, far from work?
End of the day, those who have a work and ALSO a passion, have two significant privileges.

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A job implies different expectations than a passion

This makes the passion really beautiful, whether it concerns travelling or collecting model aircrafts; it all depends on the passion being free from expectations.

If you have a travel blog where you tell about your passion whenever and how you can, you don’t have to think about figures, growth, company contacts/contracts.
You are left with the purity of writing for yourself and the freedom to communicate whatever you want your way.
This applies to all kinds of passion, above all the artistic or creative one.

Sooner or later, for instance, all painters or photographers have to face the factious universe of galleries, once they start dreaming of living out of their art.

If you have a permanent job, a privilege not for everybody by the way, do you think it is worth giving it up to turn your pure passion into a new work jungle?

People say, you know: routine, traffic, rhythms, having to “ask for permissions”, discontent.

Yet, are we sure that dissatisfaction only depends on that 9am to 6pm job?

This is exactly my point.
Precondition (a bit late): I’ve left a beautiful 9am to 6pm job, where I was surrounded by people who will always be a family for me, to work as a freelancer with a VAT number (something I’ve never regretted and I don’t come from a family of billionaires), and I really can’t tell you “don’t do it”.
If not a hypocrite, I’d certainly sound contradictory. And I would be imprecise or sound cocky if I said this is not something everybody can do.
It’s not true, happiness is a duty more than a right and everybody can and has to pursue it.

Yet, before quitting a stable job and getting rid of your boss and colleagues, working time constraints etc., in my opinion we should ask ourselves what really makes us unhappy.

How do you “take a leap in the dark”? 

Well yeah, understanding the reasons of our discontent! Not that easy, isn’t it? How to do it?
There are many ways to do it, from taking some time off to think about it to speaking with a friend or even resorting to a good psychologist in order to understand what makes us restless and anxious inside.

Saying that making an important decision is just like taking “a leap in the dark” is like saying that you only need creativity and compulsions to live out of your writing/art. It is false, in other words.

To make a choice, you need to be aware of yourself at least, if not of the world.
Your instinct and talent are not enough to do an “exciting” job. You need to study, learn the technique and practice. And, why not, you need a good dose of luck.

On the other hand, there are only two ways to take a leap in the dark: like a bungee jumper or like a clumsy Willy E. Coyote.