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

[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.