What do you do, when you can’t do what you love?
I’ll be honest. Not knowing what I wanted to do had never been a problem for me.
I was the asshole of a kid who sat at the back of the class in high school, reading Harry Potter and giving the teacher the my figurative bird whenever I passed a test.
Right, that was just me bragging.
But I was also the kid who scoffed at those who walked around our school’s annual education fair with a lost, glazed over look in their eyes. I smirked at – okay this is embarrassing – the kids who shrugged mirthlessly when asked what they were going to major in, or the kids who dropped out of A-levels because it “just wasn’t their thing”.
In my head, I was the one true straight arrow, headed exactly where I needed to be. In my last post I mentioned being a real little shit. See what I mean?
But now through the added lens of retrospect, I can see that all I was, was fucking lucky.
My parents brought me up reading Peter and Jane since I was 3. They sat me in front of a computer every night – my father an electrical engineer, and my mother a linguist – and made me write pages and pages of stuff (A story, a poem, a letter, 367 words of Hello Kitty, whatever).
Then there was the fact that it was writing I loved, and not anything else. Writing is an okay profession. It pays alright and no one will judge you because then they’d have to read your work first, and that takes more time than a lot of people are willing to give. I know some children of doctors who would rather come out as gay or bisexual than as an aspiring artist or – EGAD – a musician. So yeah, that was another thing going for me.
A few months back, when I was still writing for The Star, I met up with a childhood friend of mine. He had a problem.
Said friend was studying accounting but his heart had left that field semesters ago. Now, he said, he felt like he was just passing time, trying not to kill himself fin the process, but that he couldn’t drop out because his parents were pinning too much on him becoming an accountant.
Already, that friend had ditched an exam and intentionally flunked another. My heart went out to him – hard not to, with 13 years of friendship under your belt – but there wasn’t much that I could do besides offering a hug (I’m a great hug giver. Sometimes, if I like you, I’ll even do it for free) and sending him off on his way by the end of the night.
Back then, I felt a cruel sense of relief. Thank god I wasn’t in that position. Except, fast forward 5 months give or take, and I am.
In a previous post I mentioned moving to real estate like it was no big deal. Only it wasn’t. Let’s be brutally honest: I’m in a field I previously had zero interest in, dealing with people who make money off the desperation and/or greed of others, earning money that I might – or might – not receive, with zero hands-on coaching and hardly anyone around my own age.
And here’s what I’ve learnt.
It’s taken a few bouts of chronic depression and a dash of suicidal tendencies, but I can say this at least:
If you’re not happy doing it, you’re probably not doing it well enough; and if you’re not doing it well enough, you’re probably not doing it often enough. Life doesn’t care why you’re not getting any better, like that bitch of a boss you had, life just relies on results when doling out privilege or punishment.
People talk about “doing what you love”, like it’s some fucking easy thing to do – that’s what I thought, at least. But hardly anyone ever mentions loving what you do. So my first piece of advice is this: If there’s nothing you can do about it – and absolutely nothing – then just do it. Suck it up, strap it on (you’re not a whiny 14 year old anymore) and get the job done. In fact, get the job done so many times that you actually get good at it. In fact, be the best at whatever job you’re doing. Take pride at what you do. After all, you’re probably doing said thing more often than the average Joe. Average Joe knows nothing. Average Joe will flail and die without your advertise. Average Joe needs you.
My second bit of advice is this: If you already know what you’re good at, or if you find something you like doing quite a bit, don’t ever let go. And I’m writing this in the hopes that those who are still reading (you are? Really? Don’t you have a life or something?) will be just joining college and settling on a major.
So experiment. Do it as vast and as wide as you can until you latch onto something you find so enjoyable it’s practically self-indulgent.
Take writing for example: For a very, very long time, it never occurred to me that I could be good (or bad) at it, because being good was never a matter of import. I liked writing. It was for me. So for a lengthy period of time, I kept doing it because it made me happy. I also continued to make the same mistakes again and again until Ian took a look at one of my drafts and fainted, but the point is that I made it my calling. I’ve always believed that the best writers don’t just write. They bleed.
Some people indulge in making money. Hey, no judgement, that’s their thing. Some people like looking hot and using the patriarchy’s obsession with pretty things to fuel their career. Nothing wrong with that either. The world isn’t made out of solely doctors, or lawyers, or engineers, or architects. It’s made by a whole cacophony of people and passions. We need food to eat, and bricks to be laid, so by that line of logic, someone’s got to do it.
The problem is when we start glamorizing certain jobs and blacklisting others with Forbes top-earning listicles and reality tv shows. Like, just this week, during the BRATs Malacca camp, I met two 80-something women who were working in a tiny shop, cutting hair and sewing clothes and basically being awesome at life.
Whatever it is you decide to do, listen to me: If you find something that sends all your senses on overdrive, and find people that make you excited about life, then don’t ever let that go, even for a second. Because you never really know how valuable that is until you lose it. And to be honest, I’m really tired. I’m tired of feeling lost and I’m tired of feeling so tired. But most of all, I wish I could be as excited to be awake again.
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| Now I can't see the word SPA* the same way again. |
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