Tell me about yourself.

[resonant]

I'm suddenly struck with the desire to know how other people do the things that matter most to them, how they find and follow their passions.

How do you decide where your heart is? How do you carve out time and energy to pursue it?

Are you on a new road or one you've been following for a long time? What have you learned that could help others? What false starts have you made, what poor judgments? What have you compromised, and what do those compromises look like to you now?

Comments

[trcunning.livejournal.com]

My single biggest regret is that I didn't commit to college until it was too late and when I realized I was failing I swallowed almost 200 sleeping pills. I want to go back, I want to finish school but I'm scared because I still don't want to know what I want to be when I'm done.
I don't have a goal and that terrifies me.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, no! What a potential tragedy. I'm glad you survived -- that's an achievement right there.

It's hard, though, isn't it, to choose what you want to do?

I don't know how old you are, but I'm 43, and one thing I've learned in the last few years, from watching the lives of people my age, is that nobody has a career. By the time people hit their forties, pretty much everybody is taking a different path, one way or another -- changing jobs/fields, changing their priorities because they have kids or changing their priorities because the kids are leaving home, moving in new directions.

So I don't know -- maybe it helps if you think of yourself as choosing a path for the next phase of your life, rather than choosing a path for the rest of your days until you're old and gray?

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

Good lord, I feel like the last person who should ever give advice on such things, but the one thing I learned is--be flexible. Things change all the time--your dreams, your desires, your job--everything. I've see people who were miserable because they hung on to what they thought their dream was. Even if their desires changed.

I went to grad school and spent quite few years doing post-doctoral research because I loved science. And then...I didn't. Academia was pretty sucky at that level, and the idea of becoming a professor and being mired in it was kind of depressing. I took a job in industry, doing bench work, then migrated to the business side of things because it was new and exciting and kind of fun.

I had a great job that I threw myself into because it was fun, and then the job changed--the company got sold, relocated, restructured, all those bad things and when I left it barely existed anymore. Then I took another job that I thought was going to be great and they, uh, didn't like me very much. I left there, too. My current job is kind of dull. It doesn't engage me at all but I'm too busy writing porn and bellydancing and beading to really care. Ten years ago I couldn't imagine feeling this way.

Strange how things change.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

At my very first office job, which I did in the summers during college, I had a co-worker who cheerfully told me, "Oh, I only work to finance my real life."

I wouldn't say my father was ambitious, when he was working, but he believed in that nebulous thing called "getting ahead," and my mother was career-minded because as a woman raised in the fifties she understood that a career was something that not just anybody was allowed to have. So I had never met anybody who'd spent a lifetime in jobs that were truly just for the money.

I was kind of appalled then, but now I think -- well, life has many components, doesn't it? and some of them you get paid for, and some of them you don't, and maybe in some phases of your life, it's restful to have the really important stuff not be the money-making stuff.

[pocketmouse]

I just kind of fell into theatre, and I've been in love with it ever since. I got a little hooked in high school, because it made me feel useful, but I really got dragged in in college, where I ended up working for the theatre department, and by a series of odd coincidences (mostly being at the right place at the same time as other people) I got an assistant stage management position my first semester, and it just kind of spread from there. It took a bit of an odd turn when my supervisor/technical director left, and we only had interim faculty, but I ended up taking on a lot of the responsibility, and I think that actually served me well. It just had the downside of making me a little too busy and stressed out (basically running 3 jobs in addition to schoolwork, and 2 of those jobs were full-time). But I love it to bits, and it has parts that make me work hard, and parts that help me relax, so even if I'm constantly busy, I can trade back and forth between stressful and easy, by choosing which task to work on.
I've also been really lucky to mostly work with really agreeable people -- I haven't met too many hardcore divas yet, just awesome people. When you accidentally have 3-hour conversations about your job, or things to do with your job, and you only have to stop because you have to be somewhere else, it's kind of glorious. And everyone knows everyone, and we tend to have time to joke around, and there are so many different worldviews, especially with all the people who travel. I never want to stop. And fortunately, this is the kind of job that you can work on forever, in one capacity or another. There's not really any stopping because you're too old.

I wish I'd had a little more free time in college (working theatre means working evenings) but socializing with the theatre people meant going to some really great parties, and having really smart discussions, and having a family out of the faculty, instead of professors that you refer to by title. And I think if I did it over again, I wouldn't really be able to stop myself from doing it the same way.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow. You know what I think is the coolest thing about this story? If you'd told your high-school guidance counselors, "I want a career in theatre," they'd probably have told you it was impractical.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

whew. I look forward to seeing what people have to say to this.

I don't have too much of an answer; first of all, I'm not entirely sure I know where my passion lies. I know several things that I love to do -- read; dance; teach theater; feed people; work with people who are exploring faith -- but I can't really identify any one of them as My Passion. I feel pretty strongly about a number of things, but not absolutely overwhelmingly about any one of them. I guess that's why my "career" to date has such a patchwork look to it -- major in art, work for a year in books, work for a couple years in film, a year in theater, now grad school, etc. I'm also not especially good at solo work; I'm a great manager and given a lot of person-hours to shove around I can accomplish miracles with a team to direct, but left entirely to my own devices I tend to grind to a halt unless something happens to get me going again on a project. I dream big but don't necessarily accomplish a lot.

ooh, depressing! I mean, despite that self-knowledge, I actually feel like I'm living life to a fair degree of fullness. Not the max, for sure, but not the worst either.

The most important thing I've learned: if you want to do something, you have to just DO it, damn the torpedoes. If you love it that much, or think you might, you have to just quit your job/move to a new place/etc. You've got to be able to commit to the potential financial hardships, to maybe leaving your family and/or friends behind, to whatever else -- and I think the best way to do that is by ripping the bandaid off. You can plan to make your move for ten years, and *maybe* you'll do it then -- or maybe you'll find another reason why you can't do it yet. And meanwhile you'll be ten years older. I really think it's better, if you've found your goal, to just go for it, and deal with all the consequences as they come.

The second most important thing is that it's really not so bad to be lower-lower middle class. I would never want to be grindingly poor, especially not with children to support, but I make a tiny fraction of what most people with my level of education make, and by god, it's fine. I have a lovely apartment, I eat well, I go on occasional trips, I do the cultural things that are important to me. The easiest way to do all these things while having no money is to be willing to live in a neighborhood that is supposedly "bad" -- and you know, unless you're dealing drugs, you're not usually in a lot of danger in those neighborhoods. Could something happen? Sure. But it could in other parts of town, too. If you're willing to say "life's too short to be so afraid all the time," you can make a little cash go a long way.

I'm still making false starts, so I'll let that one go :) I will say, I don't *exactly* regret any of them. I learned something new from all of them. The only thing I really regret about them is that I tend to stick with them for too long. I also kind of wish I could get a do-over on the first, say, three years out of college. If I Had Known Then What I Know Now, I would've spent much more time and money traveling, putting it on my credit cards to worry about later. It might have been better to live at home for a couple of years and work in DC instead of moving straight to NY. On the other hand, I might *never* have moved to NY if I'd done that, so who knows. That's the trouble with second-guessing, anyway; the reason I didn't know then what I know now is that I hadn't done all the things that lead me now to know what I know. :)

I'm also still always making poor judgments, usually on day-to-day stuff. I tend to make really good choices when it comes to the huge, life-changing decisions, and then have trouble wringing the very best out of them every day. The three best decisions of my life, in order: to "convert" to Catholicism; to go to the college I fell in love with, even though it was more money than either of my other two top choices; and to quit my first job after a year, to leap into the (as it turned out) complete unknown. Those are BIG decisions, and they were all right. But almost every day of the last ten years I've failed to get the most out of them. It happens. You keep going, and wait for the moments of sunshine, you know?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

This is kind of a more positive way of saying what the old folks are saying when they say, "Take what you want and pay for it."

I do think it's important to look at all your trade-offs as choices. I mean, you don't have to move out to the suburbs the minute you get a job, or wait until you have the money before you take a risk, or whatever -- they're choices, and they have both advantages and disadvantages like every other choice.

I expected to feel that I had fewer options as I got older, but I actually feel that I have more -- and part of that is being married (thus each of us cuts some of our risks in half), and part of it is actually having skills and experience, but part of it is just that I had a sort of tunnel vision in youth that I'm gradually losing.

(Though I think you're a better risk-taker than I am; doing some of the things you've done would have scared me to death.)

[tacittype.livejournal.com]

Oooh, fun! I can talk about my cool new job, which I adore.

ETA: God, this is long. Hope that's ok...

I moved cities about two years ago, a year after graduating and after more crappy temping jobs than I care to recall. My friend and I saddled ourselves with a mortgage, and a house that needed a ton of renovation, and were too busy to get jobs for a few months. We lived in a house with no running water except for an outside tap, and no kitchen for four months. Halfway in, we heard about a business course that gave away £1500 for attending twenty hours over three months. Now, we'd been so poor we'd been going to C's mum's for dinner. I had one pair of shoes, and they had a hole I could fit most of my hand through. £1500 sounded like a *lot*, and we'd still have time to finish our house. We enrolled on the course purely for the cash... but ended up starting a painting and decorating business. Three months of convicing advisors we were serious about starting a business left us pretty serious about starting a business!

It started off as an avoidance-of-temping thing. Doing up our house had been fun, but I didn't really plan to do it forever. But we soon realised that it was a lot less stressful to go in and decorate someone's house when we could go home to a nice comfy house and have showers in a finished bathroom and sit around in PJs in the evenings. It was fun. I never particulary wanted to be my own boss, but I hated having idiots be the boss of me. It made me crazy. With the business, I got to hang out with my best friend all day, work around social events and have lie ins. But it wasn't really very thrilling to decorate room after room, and we decided one day over a cup of tea to become property developers instead.

We wrote a business plan full of fibs and half truths that served our goal of getting someone to lend us a huge wad of money. We went to meetings and blagged and flirted and lied. We won over a few important people who saw that we were enthusiastic and intelligent and were going to keep haggling until they caved. We landed ourselves a loan of nearly £150,000, and got my (surprisingly generous!) parents to invest their retirement fund of a further £100k. That was far scarier - they rely on our interest from that loan. We bought a house. We've been doing it up for the last three months - today I concreted two floors, and I ache and have lots of little cuts and bruises... but it doesn't feel like a compromise, it's just the way my job is and I wouldn't change it. I'm knackered all the time, but it's a good, satisfied kind of tired.

So, we're still broke, but our fridge is fully stocked. I have several entire pairs of shoes. I'm glad we had the painting and decorating phase because it got us out of debt and gave us a portfolio of pretty pictures to show the bank. We learnt that we could work with each other just fine.

I was lucky to find someone who shared my interests. It didn't start out as a long term plan (though now I have a spreadhseet forecasting where we'll be in 10 years), it was just a way I could avoid something that made me miserable. It honestly barely occured to me that we wouldn't get a loan in the end - I guess there was a lot of blind determination involved. I wouldn't change my route here, although it was tough at times, because it makes I can sit back and survey my little property empire and feel really damned smug.

Next: my disaster of a personal life.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is really cool! It echoes what jenna_thorn says in the comment above about seeing a need -- if you hadn't been doing what you were doing then, you wouldn't have been in a position to move on to the next step.

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

I'm not anywhere near what I thought I would be. From the outside, I must seem like a radically different person than I once was, and yet, in hindsight, the path I took to get here is trampled to the dirt, so while I can see where I could have gone elsewhere, I can very clearly see how I got to where I am.

I may have gotten lost in that metaphor. I should use maps and signposts more than I do. I wonder if anyone has thought to market a GPS for illustrative language?

I don't know that I have figured out yet where my heart is, quite honestly. I've made decisions based on where and who I was at the time, and while yeah, I look back and cringe on some (okay, to be honest, more than a few) of them, I don't know that I could stand up and point to any one point in my life and say "Okay, that milepost. Self, don't marry the SoB. Turn right, not left." Because that (ghastly) experience taught me humility and empathy and that grandmother is right when no one expects her to be. Which is twice ironic, as my first marriage is held up as an example in our family, second only to grandmother's third and fourth marriages. What can I say? I come by emotional and social inadequacies naturally.

And yet, my expression of that learned humility tends to take form in ways that reflect my life prior to the turning point. So I'm still the same sarcastic, thread-twining, heavy-hipped, hedonistic cat-loving, librarian at heart.

Maybe it's because I'm still in the middle of living my life, but I remember too well the reasons behind the compromises I've made (and on the other hand, the times I've stood and said "Enough. No more.") so I don't regret them, not exactly. Another twenty years from now, I may be able to look back on my own life objectively, but not yet. I've not reached a point high enough for a vista, maybe.

Then again, I could be eighty and feel the same way.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I wonder if anyone has thought to market a GPS for illustrative language?

Probably not, or else presidential speeches and small-town newspaper articles would be very different.

How you feel about your marriage is kind of how I feel about journalism school -- a colossal waste, and in my case also proof of a really serious lack of self-knowledge, but on the other hand, I couldn't be where/who I am if I hadn't done it.

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. That's a huge question.

I feel like most of the big things in my life have just sort of happened to me... I took this bus, I drove this car, I got on this train, I walked down this street, I turned this corner, I opened this door, and I stepped into a bank... well, okay, not the bank part, but you get the idea.

The one really smart thing I did -- one that's paid off hugely ever since -- was shell out for aptitude testing at Johnson O'Connor (http://www.jocrf.org/). It wasn't cheap (several hundred dollars, and that was over 20 years ago), but it gave me the insights and information that I needed in order to choose paths (career and otherwise) that would be the most satisfying.

See, it turns out that one of the biggest factors in whether you feel satisfied with your life is whether or not you're using all of your high aptitudes. Some of us -- and I suspect it's true of a lot of us in fandom -- have what they call "too many aptitudes" because no defined job uses more than five, and if you have three or four or five beyond that that aren't getting exercised in some fashion, you're going to be twitchy and unsatisfied with your life. I was lucky; my "extra" aptitudes were musical, which could be satisfied by singing along with the car radio, and things like finger dexterity, so anything that had me spending time on a keyboard was good.

But the kicker was that it gave me the information I needed to leave computer programming (which I was pretty good at but left me restless, and I didn't know why) and find myself a job that could have been invented just for me (tech support help desk for a software vendor).

And I've used the information ever since in making choices about my life; I'm always aware of those aptitudes and I'm always thinking about how I can make use of them, whether in a job or a hobby or some other way.

That's the rational side of it. But most of the big things, well... I took this bus, I drove this car, I got on this train, I walked down this street, I turned this corner... and life sort of happened, and I floundered around until I found my place in wherever I'd ended up.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

In Samuel Delany's Stars In My Pockets Like Grains of Sand, everyone has a job₁ and a job₂ and what they call home₃work.

I read the book decades ago, but I was always very struck by that -- it seems much more humane than expecting people to work at the same job 40 hours a week for years and years. I'd love to do one thing 20 hours a week, and another thing 10 hours, and a couple of volunteer tasks 5 hours apiece.

[giglet.livejournal.com]

I'm not the right person to ask. But I can't pass up the chance to be pedantic!

What have you learned that could help others?

There is no virtue in misery. There may be some virtue in sacrifice, but really, happiness has value for it's own sake.

Sometimes, it's the process that counts, not the result. Sometimes learning to dance is the point, not performing.

Watching TV is very seldom either a satisfying process or a satisfying result.

How do you decide where your heart is?

Slowly and with many false starts. Usually, it's when I figure out that I've made a dreadful mistake. Sometimes I can correct it. Sometimes I can't.

Given how averse I am to taking risks, and given how I'm much better at listening to my head than my heart, I'm ridiculously lucky to be as happy as I am. I can't claim credit for it.

The fact that I married the guy and had a kid and both are making me happy is a source of constant amazement to me. The fact that I can make my living doing what I'd do for free (and had done for free, since about third grade) is also pretty amazing.

One last point:
Don't defer happiness: My boss once told me, "I'm on my second career, I'm 38, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up." She was, pretty much, my hero and role model. But within a year of saying that, she was murdered. So if you are passionate about something, then it's important enough to start with right now. You might not finish it, but you should start.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Watching TV is very seldom either a satisfying process or a satisfying result.

After a certain point, I'm afraid neither is looking at a computer screen. I'm constantly telling myself this.

So if you are passionate about something, then it's important enough to start with right now. You might not finish it, but you should start.

Wow. This is so cool.

Also, it reminds me of advice on Eddie's Anti-Procrastination Site, which was: "You just have to keep starting."

[laurenmitchell.livejournal.com]

I make my money to live by working in an inbound call centre, taking theatre and football bookings.

My heart, mind, and soul run on words: stories, fics, poetry, anything. Reading them. Writing them. Editing them. Reading, writing, and editing are the three things I always list as 'Additional interests' on any forum I sign up for that asks for them. I read books on the train to and from work, and at home, and I read fic online. I write mostly at home, but I always carry a notebook and pen wherever I go in case I get some downtime to write. And I edit writing for my friends, as well as refining my own work.

I've had to compromise between making something-with-words my career and the stability my current job gives me, given that I'm getting married in October and bought my home in January. But I'm still in touch with the man who runs the editing course that I intend to do next year, and I've just applied for a full-time position at a bookstore, and given that I don't mind what aspect of publishing I eventually get into, I have a fairly good change of eventually working in that industry, which will make me very happy.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

See, the thing I like about this is that you haven't fallen into that trap of thinking that you only get one career, and you have to choose it at age 18, and then you're done. In real life, it seems to work out more like: Well, I did that, until I didn't any more.

[ecaterin.livejournal.com]

What an interesting question....

Like others who have answered already, I've found the whole "life is what happens while you're making other plans" adage to be all too true :P The idea that we have CONTROL over what we're going to be doing is a uniquely western modern one...and clearly it's an insane one, since it isn't born out in reality!

I have a calling of healing. I did alternative medical healing work for years & loved it & was excellent at it and felt totally fulfilled. But...I thought the family standards of being more & more educated were meaningful or realistic guides to behaviour, so I went to grad school in my field and was completely utterly miserable. I didn't recognize that for what it was (could the signs have BEEN clearer???) and continued to stay, get into more and more debt, and be utterly miserable. My calm, quiet healing practice that I had loved so much and thrived so well at was usurped by the Get A Degree Monster and my peace of mind went the same way. And I didn't even really see it happening.

So. Years at grad school, accidental pregnancy X 2 (children I desperately wanted, since I had years of infertility, but NOT at that time or with that man) and 2 serious chronic illnesses later I was left with an unfinished degree, 2 children and single-mom-hood. Lesson learned the hard way - go against what is truly your path & your body will kick your ass. My health was devastated by doing what was not mine work to do.

Hmmm. Thought I had a handle on what I was going to be, did I? heh heh heh. I often say that children exist to rid us of the last vestige of illusion that we are In Control. :D

So, my health is permanently compromised. I'm raising 2 children waaaay below the poverty line. I type medical transcription and work from home, cause thats all my health will allow. I pour most of my energy into my children, helping at their wonderful alternative school, going to parks, practicing music & reading aloud when I'm too ill to do much else. My partner is a wonderful man and we have a sweet relationship, but we keep finances out of it & live day to day since he's not in any better financial shape.

What am I? What is my calling? What are my goals? I'm a mother, foremost and will put most of my effort into just that until the kids are grown. I'm passionate about mothering, and that has led to me teaching positive discipline classes online & on the phone. I'm still a healer and use that skill almost every day to help my family. I turned my extensive medical background to a job that could bring in some extra money, as long as I don't push my body too hard.

A family member recently gifted (translation, dragged me kicking and screaming) tuition for me to take a professional certificate program in computer mapping - its not a calling, but it sure was interesting, and I've learned that I *don't* really know what I'm doing or where I'm going in my life anyway. My job is to keep my eyes open & see what comes to me, like this certificate. As long as I'm paying attention to the world, and staying in tune with my spirit & body I may find that the next step reveals itself.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

was completely utterly miserable. I didn't recognize that for what it was (could the signs have BEEN clearer???)

Oh, this is so horribly familiar. I hated reading newspapers, I hated talking to strangers, when I got my first journalism job and scheduled my first interview I was so scared that I was seriously considering running away (the guy was blind; I said to myself, he doesn't know I'm here so I could sneak off and never come back) -- did it occur to me that just maybe journalism wasn't a well-chosen career? Argh! [thwaps younger self repeatedly about the head]

My job is to keep my eyes open & see what comes to me, like this certificate. As long as I'm paying attention to the world, and staying in tune with my spirit & body I may find that the next step reveals itself.

I like that. I'm trying to finish and sell a novel, and the spouse is changing careers, and we're both planning types -- we like to know at least a couple of steps down the path -- so keeping this kind of an open mind is very hard for both of us right now.

[cat-latin.livejournal.com]

I'm 41, single and childless. I've worked in insurance, waited on tables, sold cosmetics, cared for the disabled, been a proofreader and a phone collections person. I even briefly worked as a dominatrix. I'm glad I've put my hands to so many things.

Ideally, I'd be making a living telling stories through writing, art and performance. So far, I've only done these things for fun.

I find it incredibly difficult to follow my bliss. It took me a decade to get up the nerve to go to college and six years to finish my degree. Every time I approach the easel or the blank computer screen, lots of negative garbage from my past gets in the way. ("that's a stupid idea, this is no way to make a living, you'll never be good enough," etc.) I have to expend lots of energy fighting off those demons before I can reach a balanced place to create.

I'll never stop fighting, but it's exhausting. I always hope it will get easier.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Every time I approach the easel or the blank computer screen, lots of negative garbage from my past gets in the way. ("that's a stupid idea, this is no way to make a living, you'll never be good enough," etc.)

God, yes. It may be the hardest thing in the world to let yourself be a beginner, let yourself make mistakes and learn.

I have a friend who's from Spain, and even after seven years here her English isn't that great, but I admire her so much because she starts conversations with strangers, about complicated subjects, even when she doesn't know the words -- like a little kid learning to talk, really. You can't learn anything if you can't stand to look foolish.

(Can you tell I have to tell myself this a lot?)

[20thcenturyvole.livejournal.com]

One thing (of many things) that I'm really grateful to my dad for is bringing us up to think of the whole world as a potential stomping-ground. He (and we) are Australians, but he was born and raised in Papua New Guinea, and when I was six we moved out of Australia and went to Fiji, and then to England, and then the UAE. When I was looking at places to go to university, I had my choices narrowed down to two countries - Canada and New Zealand, where I'd never been - before I found Victoria U in Wellington. And I don't know if I want to stay in New Zealand, but it's a great place to be right now, and I'm glad that I came here.

I guess what I'm saying is, my dad raised us to explore, to go with what feels right, even if that occasionally means jumping off a metaphorical cliff and hoping there's a mattress at the bottom. Traits tend to run in families, and we're all teachers and writers and explorers by default, which basically means that none of us have any real idea about what we want, but just looking runs us into quite enough adventure.

Some people have things they want to do from a very young age, that is their overwhelming passion and rules their life. For my mum, it was horses - she is now an excellent trainer and good dressage-rider. But those people are actually quite rare, and most people just sort of fall into things, like my dad did with journalism (and later, teaching journalism - see, I told you!). My sister and brother and I are all focused vaguely on writing and story-telling; my sister is a sometime-playwrite, my brother has gotten very involved in the technical side of theatre, and I'm persuing film-making at university, but all of that can change; priorities can shift, we know. I guess what I took away from all this was: do what you love if you know what it is, and if you don't, keep looking until you stumble over it; you're sure to have picked up a bunch of amazing stuff in the meantime.

Wow, that was long and rambly. I'm sorry; I hope that was remotely helpful.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

It's great, though very alien to me; my family is mostly made up of planners and risk-avoiders.

One thing I have learned, though, is that good things come to me when I pursue three things: curiosity, the desire to have interesting conversations with interesting people, and the desire to get better at whatever I'm doing. If I follow where those three impulses lead, and stop thinking about "career-building" or "networking" or whatever, then I usually find myself in a place that I like, even if it's a place I didn't know existed before I got there.

[reginagiraffe]

I feel kind of weird saying this, having read some of the responses above, but... I have had the easiest fucking life I could imagine.

I was born to an upper middle class family. Granted there were six kids so even with that income, money was still tight sometimes but my parents were both raised in the depression so they were very good at budgeting and only buying what was necessary with the occasional fun things thrown in. I never felt deprived and always felt loved.

My parents paid for college. I worked hard and I graduated with a good GPA and a job (I was doing scut work for a lab and got hired as a real lab tech after I graduated). It was a temp job that was supposed to last for two months, ended up lasting for seven. I was out of work during the holidays (which was actually kind of nice) but I had plenty of savings thanks to good training by my parents. I got another job in January, which I had for 12 years. Adored my boss. Got my Master's for free as a job benefit. It took me four years and I worked my ass off but it was worth it. Got another job (there would have been no benefit from the Master's staying at the old job) with a 65% increase in salary. I've been here almost 8 years. I don't adore this boss at all, but I've managed to establish a reasonable working relationship with him. I purposely did not get my PhD since that would require more work and responsibility than I really want. I come in, do my job (which I mostly enjoy) and, at the end of the day, I leave work at work and come home to a loving supportive husband and a great house. I have excellent benefits and a very nice salary.

I met my husband my senior year of college. We met in January, had our first date in April, got engaged in June, got married the following April and have been extremely happy for more than 19 years. We have no children by choice (a mutual decision) and plenty of money for doing all the fun things we like to do. We make each other laugh (a LOT) and enjoy a lot of the same things. We have the same values and consider the same things to be important. We treat each other with kindness and respect.

Health-wise, I've always been thin and in good health. I've never done drugs and only drink moderately and I have no addiction issues. I don't smoke. Since I turned 35 or so I've been gaining a bit of weight and have gotten kind of flabby but in January I joined a gym and got a personal trainer and am well on the way to getting quite fit. I also have never had any mental health problems.

I have a few hobbies which I enjoy and pick up or drop as I care to.

So... I have no advice except live within your means, be kind but not a pushover, take responsibility for your actions and be thankful for when life runs smoothly.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I also feel like I've had a lot of advantages (and a lot of the same ones you've had: parents who could pay for college, meeting the right romantic partner very early) -- but I'm the sort of person who needs a decision made even if it's a bad one, and so when I was about fourteen I decided I was going to be a newspaper reporter, and, there! my career is chosen, and I don't ever have to think about it again and face that awful uncertainty, right?

But it was totally wrong for me (not to mention being a very insecure field right now), and I'm sort of in the process of finding my way to something new.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding contrary, I would say that the most important thing I've learned--the thing I wish to hell I could go back and try to impart to a younger me--is that for me, at least, there *is* no one right path, no true calling, no singular passion that will transform my life and give it total meaningfulness and fulfillment.

For years and years I assumed that there *was* and that I just hadn't found it yet, and so I tossed aside countless perfectly good and satisfying careers--very much like some romantic who thinks there's only one man in the world who's her true soulmate, and keeps dumping really good guys because they're not, y'know, *perfect.* The work I do now is often interesting and sometimes annoying and intermittently tedious and certainly does not cause my candle to burn at both ends, but lets me feel like I'm making modest positive changes in some people's lives, and pays me a decent income, and is entirely OK for now, until I decide to ditch it and do something different.

Writing, which for a while felt like my true passion, seems to have gone into a long dry spell that I'm afraid may be permanent, but really that's nothing new; I've had true passions before that flared up and ran their course and burned out and are now just memories.

One thing I've concluded is that some people are by nature hedgehogs and some are foxes (to quote Isaiah Berlin, who was in turn quoting some Greek guy--“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”). Some people have that single driving, consuming passion, and some people have a whole lot of things that interest and preoccupy them for a time before they move on. A good thing to figure out early in life is which kind one is, and then stop trying to make oneself be the other. I'd have had a happier life if I'd done that.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I like the romantic comparison! I tend to think that people have passions, plural -- I mean, there's no social expectation of monogamy in jobs/hobbies/how-you-spend-your-time. You can be passionate about gardening and biochemistry and listening to folk music, all at once, or you can be passionate about biochemistry for a while and then chuck it all to run a knitting shop.

I have a general passion for seeing to it that things are in their proper place, metaphorically speaking, but that's too general to be much help in choosing a career direction, since it could lead to anything from being a secretary to being a management consultant.

I like to have a plan, and it frustrates me not to, but I think that's the current life lesson, actually -- to accept until I decide to ditch it and do something different as opposed to forever and ever till I'm too old to work.

[oriolegirl]

As others have said, I don't know how useful this will be, but here you go.

I swore up and down throughout high school and part of college that I would never be a librarian, even though I had been working in libraries for years. And then I had an amazing boss when I worked in the reference department my sophomore and junior years and I changed my mind. I went to library school right after college. I got my MLIS 12 years ago. (Sometimes I forget just how long I've been a "grown-up".)

7 years ago I moved and had the opportunity to go back to school in the evenings for almost no cost (hooray for academic perks!) and I've slowly but surely been working on a 2nd master's degree. I'm in the midst of rewriting my thesis right now. I'd been sort of feeling like I'm in a rut, job-wise, but hadn't really thought much about it. However, once I started working on my thesis, I realized that what I really want to do is go back to school full-time and get my PhD. Sort of a scary prospect as I have a mortgage and need to keep myself and the cat in food and kitty toys. But I found a program that sounds so cool and I went over to talk to them and came away feeling like I *really* want to be part of it. So I've decided that I'm definitely going to apply for Fall '08. If I get accepted, I'll figure it out from there. It's scary, but I'm going to do it anyway.

What I'd do after I got the PhD, I have no clue. However, things generally seem to work out in the end, so I'm not going to worry about that just yet.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I've always vaguely thought I'd like to work in a library, but I never have. I mean, I imagine that "working a library" doesn't really translate to "they pay me to read books."

[frostfire-17.livejournal.com]

Huh. Well, unlike most of the people answering this (I think), I'm still a comparative baby (21--finally legal!). But I'm on the verge of making a decision to follow a passion, one that will affect a lot of my coming years--that is, applying to grad programs that will lead me to a Ph.D.--and despite all the problems and headaches and general suckiness that academia can provide, I am desperately hoping for an acceptance and funding, and really dedicated to actually seeing this through. Because I love studying the ancient world, and I really love ancient languages. And--well, I decided not to work this summer (despite opportunities) because I wanted to devote time to learning Akkadian, so I sacrificed a few thousand dollars there, and okay, I'm planning on being a grad student for the next five or ten years, which will not lead to financial solvency.

Is it worth it to land myself in the lower echelons of academia, to work and work and work for very little money and possibly even less respect? The idea of being able to focus so wholeheartedly on Mesopotamian history and language sounds like paradise to me, but I guess I won't know until I get there.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

The idea of being able to focus so wholeheartedly on Mesopotamian history and language sounds like paradise to me

That sounds like a really good sign -- that you're focused on the skills you'd be using, the things you'd be doing all day, rather than on some vague idea of glamor/power/money/security.

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

Res, this is a neat idea! what great stories I'm reading....

isn't it interesting that many people first think of their day jobs when you ask this kind of question? I think getting food on the table isn't necessarily the same thing as "your passion", although it can be. (sometimes nobody will pay for your passion, so you do what you can)

That said, I'm working at something I always dreamed of doing, and have been happily doing so for almost a decade. How did I get there? being flexible and willing to change. taking risks. being willing to do something new. being willing to do something I majorly disliked (but didn't out-and-out *hate*) for a while because it got me the chance to do something else I loved. saying "what the heck?" and putting in a resume when a friend told me about a place where "you'd be perfect for the job, but some of the other people who work there are really unpleasant and I don't know if you'd like it" (I adore the job, and the unpleasant people were perfectly civil to *me* and left soon afterwards anyway) ....hmmm...I think I've made most of my life decisions that have been most rewarding and valuable by saying "what the heck?" and just trying something....

other things I've learned:
--if you can't do exactly what you want right away, why not try to do as much of it as you can now, even if it's a little bit? that way you don't get stuck waiting for "the perfect opportunity"
--always ask for what you want. the worst they can say is "no" (and you've already said that to yourself by not asking...)
--there is no such thing as "no" -- there is "not now", "not under these circumstances", "not this way", "not with you", and "not unless X"....if you change the parameters, you may be able to change the answer from "no"....
--more money does not always equal a better situation. the intangibles matter
--everything changes. Like other folks said, what may be your passion today may not be your passion ten years from now.

hmmm....you said you wanted to know how other people follow their passions & I haven't been very personal. okay, I got into dog training because the Spouse & I promised ourselves a dog as soon as we moved to a house with a yard. a week after the move, we went down to the local SPCA and picked up a little mutt who became the apple of our eyes. We saw a notice in the paper for a local "doggie festival" (an "in the park" event for people & their dogs), said "what the heck?" and decided to take our baby. There, we saw an obedience demo put on by the local dog club. We ended up joining the club, taking a class, and then, because it looked fun, volunteering to help when the instructors taught classes. We made a lot of friends. I got into reading and email lists about dog behavior, went to bunches of seminars, joined accreditation programs, volunteered to assist teaching bunches of more classes, and eventually taught some classes of my own. I've made friends all over the country, had scads of adventures, and changed a lot of lives for the better, one doggie and its family at a time. (Our little mutt-princess? We got into pet therapy with her and visited nursing homes and disabled children's facilities and got to watch her bring joy and happiness to tons of people, all by wagging her tail a whole lot.) Have I made money at this? Nah! But my heart's been happy, my life has been full of dogs, and I still have students who email me their Santa Paws photos.

what's your passion??

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I have a cousin who's just starting out in dog training, by much the same process. (This is after a journalism degree and so many years working in a bookstore that a lot of us thought she'd end up owning the place.)

I love your list of things you've learned, especially the idea that you've already said "no" to yourself if you decide not to ask. I'm much hampered by fear of rejection, and need to take that to heart.

Right now I'm really fiction-focused, but I can already see that just writing, with no other job, isn't going to work for me in the long term -- everything's going out of my brain and nothing new is coming in. (Also it's a problem financially, of course.) So I want to find a job₂, something to finance the writing, get me out of the house, and allow me to -- I don't know. To organize something. I love to organize things.

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

I am an observatory. *g*

For me, the best part of life is who you share it with. Family, friends, whoever--someone to turn to who'll see the same humor in a situation that you do, who'll get the stories you tell, who sees the same beauty in the everyday. Connections with other people are what it's all about. And I've had some very worthy-feeling jobs (police dispatcher, working with low-income mentally ill, environmental testing) and some less worthy (restaurant management, call-center CS), but nothing has made me feel as accomplished and grateful as the opportunity to raise two wonderful people who already have and will continue to work in their own right to make the world a better place. My spiritual goals, also, my work in ministry and ongoing struggle towards spiritual growth, are central to my feeling fulfilled.

Career-wise, I've pretty much felt that anything I didn't hate having to go and do every day was okay. My husband took the career path while I put mine on hold (not that I actually had one, when we married) so that I could be more available for the children. Any job that I felt was more worthwhile in a good-for-the-community-and-the-world way felt better than those that weren't, and any job where my skills and abilities were more utilized and recognized felt better than those where they weren't (my present job SO fails in both respects, though it allows me to keep working while ill), but jobs have been fairly low in the prioritizing of my life, up to this point. Now that I'm not so bounded by the needs of my children, I'm thinking seriously about finishing the psychology half of my double major, going on for the MSW and going into counseling, which was always more my dream than the business side. That would be an adventure, and would be fulfilling in that giving-back way, but whether I do that or not, I feel like I have everything in place already that I need to feel complete, and always have--love, humor, beauty, fun, learning, all the good stuff is available no matter what I'm doing (and, of course, everything goes better with money to pay the bills.) And I love that I don't know what's coming next. Half the fun is finding out.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Any job that I felt was more worthwhile in a good-for-the-community-and-the-world way felt better than those that weren't, and any job where my skills and abilities were more utilized and recognized felt better than those where they weren't

This is the sort of thing I've learned from reading a book called Do What You Are, which actually even has exercises to help you make a list of these characteristics. But, see, my most recent job, as a technical writer, was a thing I didn't even know existed until I fell into it by accident (because I took a graphic design class and struck up a conversation with the instructor), and I can't help wondering how much other stuff is out there that I don't know about.

I love that I don't know what's coming next. Half the fun is finding out.

Boy, I wish I were like this, but I so totally am not.

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Oh, girl. I spent my 20s feverishly running down the wrong road, and my 30s finding my way out of the jungle. Now, at 45, I think I've got a handle on it, and the answer is, "One day at a time." Heh.

It probably sounds much more dramatic than it was. I got my degrees in physics, partly because I liked it, but more because it was the image that I had of myself, the image that I wanted to project to the world. I was successful to a degree, but I was never really happy trying to *be* a physicist. I always felt like an impostor. (Of course, the question I have now is, if I knew then what I know now, would it have been different? Dunno. Doesn't matter. That was then. This is now. I'm happy. Good enough. Not gonna beat my head on that brick wall anymore.)

So, I ran and ran and ran and flailed and flailed and flailed, but finally I had to admit that I was miserable, and I quit my job (I am not making this up: I was working at JPL, doing optics reliability on the fix on the Hubble Space Telescope -- no pressure there, boy) and fled to Oregon to lick my wounds. Stayed there for a couple of years, working tech support for a modem manufacturer. April 19, 1995, a bomb blew up in front of the Murrah Federal building in downtown OKC, and I sat up all night feeling like someone had broken into my home. For the next six months, the feeling got stronger and stronger that I needed to go home, and I was trying, at the time, to learn to trust my instincts, to do what I *knew* was the right thing to do, no matter what, and so I packed everything up and moved home, even though I had sworn for years that I would never do that one thing.

It was the right thing.

Couple of months later, I found the job that I still have to this day. I'm a webmaster at a government research lab, and I *love* what I'm doing, the place where I'm doing it, and, on most days, the people that I'm doing it with. I cut myself a little slack for taking so long to figure it out, because when I was doing all of that flailing, the job title, "webmaster," didn't exist.

More recently, I've made friends with a bunch of bagpipers, and I've gotten myself deeply entrenched in the world of Celtic music. I'm the girl with the camera. I've got half a dozen bands and artists using my pictures on their websites, their CD covers, their promo packages, and I'm constantly working to make it more. I never could have imagined doing anything like this, but it's home to me now, and I'm ridiculously happy here. I'm going to workshops and learning more about the craft, with an eye to picking up some $$$ as a travel photographer. I think I can, I think I can...

As for compromises... well, right now, when I'm not at my day job, I'm working on the photography thing. I travel a *lot* -- I was home a grand total of four weekends from the beginning of March through the end of June. Everything goes into the photography thing. I've let my physical and social infrastructure here in town go largely untended, because I invest everything into this wacky roadshow of a lifestyle. I'm not an on-the-road musician, but I live a lot like one. It's exhausting; I have to take good care of myself to keep from getting run down.

I have no expectations of retirement. I just want to keep on evolving, and if my life to this point has taught me anything, it's that I have no idea what will happen next.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

This is a great lesson in following instincts, but that takes practice, yes? because you don't always know what's a real instinct and what's an illusion, as you say, an image of yourself rather than the real thing. It's tricky.

I love that you included the Celtic music, too, because more and more I see that it's the whole of your life that has to work, not just the parts where the money comes from.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Midwifery was my grand passion from 1988 (when I first decided I wanted to pursue it) through many years, until I finally started my first midwifery job in 2001. Three and a half years later, what I thought was going to be the perfect midwifery job ended up breaking my heart, and I was left completely lost.

It took me a couple years to make it past that heartbreak. I love teaching, and there's a lot to love in my new job as a nursing professor (something I never in would have believed a few years ago), but I don't feel the kind of grand passion for it I felt for midwifery. Which means I don't get the same highs, but it also won't break my heart again, not the way midwifery did (although occasional students will break my heart a little, but that's okay). My boss keeps talking about wanting to keep me here for the long haul, and I'd like to think that will be the case, although I also feel a pull to someday go back to school and get that Ph.D in women's studies or some other subject that would combine my disparate interests....

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Do you mind my asking how it broke your heart? If that's too personal, that's fine; I'm just curious.

Midwifery and nursing and teaching are so important, but I'd be so lousy at all of them! I really admire people who can deal with people all day long, especially people who are in pain or bleeding. I'd go mad in a week.

[ectomycorrhizae.livejournal.com]

I didn’t find a need, the need found me.
I’ve been artistic since I was born, it runs in the family, but no one has pursued it professionally, choosing instead such diversions as engineering and neuro-opthamology. The same thing happened to me; I graduated from high school and was offered entrance scholarships to the local university. I never seriously considered going to art school, thinking my path was bound to be more academic. I majored in biology, out of love, and art history, out of love and the opportunity to get into all the art studios. In my final year I took a biology course in the rainforest and drew what was around me. My professor saw what I could do and hired me to work in her lab, drawing, photographing, and building a reference website of her experimental organisms. Pretty soon other people and institutions wanted similar work done. I now have a full time photography job, I draw pretty biological things professionally, and have had to turn away web design clients because of too much demand.
Four weeks ago I started a continuing education course at the art school. It hasn’t been spectacular, but now I’ve been a student there, and I know I didn’t miss anything.
Now if only my personal life would turn out so well.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

What an interesting job! See, and that's what makes things so difficult; it's not as though anybody can leave high school and go, "I want to draw and photograph organisms for biology professors," because it doesn't occur to you that there's any such job out there.

[norah.livejournal.com]

I don't have a passion. This is something I'm still coming to terms with. I always thought I'd find one, but I never have. I'm good at most of the things I do, great at none of them. I like a lot of things, some more than others, but there's nothing to which I'd like to dedicate myself wholly, even if I had all the leisure and choice on earth.

I am perhaps just not a passionate person? I find strong positive emotion charming and compelling in others and vaguely uncouth and embarrassing in myself. Or perhaps I was once a passionate person, but the past decade of wrestling with my brain chemistry had dulled it? Or perhaps I am just scared to be a passionate person because it is more risky than being a dispassionate-yet-interested person.

Why yes, yes I am going to get therapy, why do you ask?

I decided what I wanted from life years ago, but that's planning, not passion. I had a timeline and benchmarks. I met them all. I was passionate about my partner for a while, and I am as passionate about my son as I get about anything. I have had the same career for the last ten years and will probably have it indefinitely, though I have realized that I would rather be a librarian, because I am not willing to make the economic compromises to switch; my current career is also interesting.

I am having a fractional life crisis, so maybe I am not the best person to ask about these things. But I think about them a lot, oh yah you betcha.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I wanted a timeline and benchmarks, but I couldn't come up with one, and later it turned out that this was because I was heading in entirely the wrong direction.

I find strong positive emotion charming and compelling in others and vaguely uncouth and embarrassing in myself.

You could be one of my fellow Episcopalians! Possibly some people are cut out for passion and some for contentment? Or all of us go from one to the other at various times in our lives?

will probably have it indefinitely, though I have realized that I would rather be a librarian, because I am not willing to make the economic compromises to switch

That's very difficult, especially with a small child. I've been noticing, though, in the stories that people tell, that sometimes it happens that people find themselves in the wrong job in the right organization, and when that happens, sometimes the people in the organization can come up with solutions to help them get qualified for the right job.

I keep telling this to the spouse, too: Look, I don't know what you need to be doing, but I know you're going to have difficulty spotting it until you get the hell out of the newspaper and the hell out of Bovinia. But it's easy for me to say; it's not me who has to do the resume and submit myself for rejection.

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of in an odd place at the moment, where my life could go in any direction, but because I have the tunnel vision of youth (such a useful phrase!) I'm not sure what the paths even look like, much less where they lead. And I'm a little terrified that it won't go in the direction I want, or even worse, it won't go anywhere, and the rest of my life will be destroyed etc. etc. So I found this post and the comments enormously helpful! Is it okay if I link to it? I think some people on my flist might find it as encouraging as I do.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Sure, feel free to link. It's very interesting, isn't it, to see other people's stories?

Hate to tell you, but the problem of not knowing what the paths look like is something that has recurred for me over and over at various points in my working life. Of course, each time it happens, I have the memory of the previous time to guide me. (Mostly what the memory says is, "Don't panic!")

One thing I have found useful is to do my best to pursue some sort of human contact in any area that I find the least bit interesting -- take a class in it, join a group, etc. You want a bigger web of relationships, but you want it to be bigger in areas that are relevant to your interests. I could attend all the networking sessions in the world and end up knowing ten thousand sales executives and hairstylists and so on, but none of them would do me half the good that it did me to take one graphic design class just because I was curious -- even though I never worked in graphic design.

This is rough for introverts, but I try to force myself to do it, because it does help. Plus sometimes I'm in the position to help someone else, which is cool.

[geeklite.livejournal.com]

Nothing matters to me, really. I have never had any ambitions - not even wildly inappropriate and unachievable ones as a kid. Except perhaps to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I don't paint, dance, draw, swim, ride horses, sing, act or write.

I think I'm OK with that now.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

It really stinks that it isn't possible to grow up to be a T.Rex, doesn't it?

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

I've a few months left of high school, so this topic really, heh, resonates with me. Right now it's mostly about choosing where to go for tertiary education.

On the one hand I don't actually recall ever not wanting to be a writer. On the other hand, all I've ever hear is "don't quite your day job." On the OTHER other hand, I want to do heaps of other things, albeit heaps of other don't quit your day job style things. I'm having doubts about my acting skills as the exams draw near, but that's easily solved - if I'm good enough to pass an audition or two then university will certainly improve me to the point where I could conceivably call that a career.

So basically, I want to do something interesting in uni like arts, so it'll provide me with writing material, and also because I've always regretted not learning musical theory and linguistics sounds fun and oooh, political science! I want to do a writing course, but I'm not that interested in journalism. I want to do an acting course. And I also want to do a course that will give me a day job not to quit, but the only thing I can think of that wouldn't kill me with boredom (well, more realistically the only one where I can use my only real marketable skill; read: making shit up) is marketing. And I don't know if you actually need a degree to be a copywriter or something but I suppose it helps.

So basically I'm stressing out over my exam marks even though my final choice might have an audition and not give a damn about them, and simultaneously trying to find something that will let me do as many of the above as possible.

But I'm an optimist. I'll end up doing whatever I want to do, as long as I manage to kick this terminal procrastination habit that has me sitting here writing to you instead of to my major English project.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow -- one thing this discussion is teaching me is that I'm really bad at guessing people's ages from their commenting style.

I'm a big believer in exploring anything that's interesting to you, because one interest leads to another, and one acquaintance leads to another, and before you know it you're heading down a path you didn't know existed.

Also, you know how people tell you to be practical? The spouse and I both went to journalism school instead of pursuing (respectively) academia and fiction writing, because we both thought our real dreams were too impractical. Well, I discovered that nothing's practical if you don't love it enough to devote your real energy to it; I was a lousy journalist, and was terribly relieved when a side path opened up into technical writing. And he stuck with it for ten more years and then discovered that nothing's practical forever; the newspaper industry is imploding now and everybody's job is at risk.

Looking back, I wish I had looked at the things I did all day every day (reading fiction and writing fiction and reading folklore and hanging out in libraries) and actually done some research on the whole breadth of those fields, so that I'd know not just how people write novels but how people edit them, and market them, and create covers for them, and the ten thousand other things people do with fiction, and likewise for libraries and folklore studies -- because, you know, maybe I could be a novelist, or maybe behind the rockstar type job there are other jobs that would suit me, too.