How do you find your passion? Am I off course?
Passion is overrated. No, worse than that. All that advice about &quot;finding your passion&quot;, etc. for work, is corrosive.<p>Oh, yes, there are people who love X, make a career out of it, and continue doing X for the rest of their life and are successful.<p>While there are people who love X, trying to make a living doing X, only to find it&#x27;s not a viable career. Only, their &quot;passion&quot; makes them continue to do X far longer than they should, causing them to burn out.<p>There are all sorts of fields where the number of passionate people are far greater than the number of available jobs. Look at people who are passionate about dance, or sports, or horses, or art. Only a few of them can make a living from it. Yet everyone successful had to be passionate about it.<p>Now, get this. There are also people who start doing Y because a job is available, and find that, after a while, they enjoy doing Y. Some even find they are passionate about the job. Others use the money from Y so they can do what they are really passionate about as a hobby.<p>(And sometimes that hobby can, over time, become a career. I knew someone who was a manager of the grounds crew for the local cemetery, and a hobbyist woodworker. There was enough demand for he work that he now makes custom furniture for a living.)<p>The worst case in this scenario is to find that they really don&#x27;t like Y, but nothing says you have to do Y for the rest of your life, and at least you have the money saved up to support you while you switch jobs. Otherwise, a lot of people do X for a living, and let the income fund their passion as a hobby.<p>(For another example, my dentist decided to stop his practice and be a musician. I think it was a mid-life crisis, but at least he had the money saved up for it.)<p>Here&#x27;s another thing - most jobs aren&#x27;t fun. Most jobs are boring. For that matter, David Graeber argues that most jobs are bullshit, that is (quoting <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strikemag.org&#x2F;bullshit-jobs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strikemag.org&#x2F;bullshit-jobs</a> ):<p>&gt; The answer clearly isn&#x27;t economic: it&#x27;s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the &#x27;60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.<p>One way to interpret the general call for &quot;passion&quot; in your job is that reinforces the cultural norm &quot;to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline&quot;.<p>As for your specific situation, not all work environments are like Microsoft. There are companies which are more supportive of their employees. One friend of mine, with a mostly system adminstration job, worked for several programming-centered companies for a while, but it wasn&#x27;t until he worked for a company doing light industrial work where he really enjoyed himself in his job. He liked that they were making actual things, rather than bits, and the owner&#x2F;boss also did a great job of looking out for the employees.<p>If you&#x27;re currently making $3000&#x2F;month = $36K&#x2F;year, then that doesn&#x27;t give you time for the one thing you said that you are passionate about - international travel. While $50&#x2F;hour is $100K&#x2F;year. That&#x27;s much more than is needed to support a travel hobby.<p>You might consider looking at how much vacation time you have for a given company, or negotiate for more unpaid time off instead of salary.<p>Or, since your in your 20s, it&#x27;s pretty common to change jobs. Some people will work for a company for a year or two, then take 3 months off for travel, then work again.<p>Ignore what a recruiter thinks. Making you happy is far down the list of what they are supposed to be doing.<p>And drop this idea that you need to make your body &quot;perfect.&quot; That&#x27;s another corrosive attitude. Your body will never be perfect, making it all to easy to give up before doing what you should be doing, which is to get some exercise every day. It could be walking, dancing, going to the gym, cycling, swimming, martial arts ... something that gets you moving.<p>(Edit: To be clear, &quot;exercise&quot; doesn&#x27;t have to mean a gym membership or something formal. At your age I mostly bicycled for local errands, like shopping. It helped that I was still in a college town. Later I walked my partner&#x27;s dog for 30-45 minutes. Later I started salsa dancing, and go to the point where I was dancing 4-5 times per week. (A passion, perhaps, but not a good career choice.) Now I walk, and swim 30 minutes twice weekly. :)