03/30/2026

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”

A common saying of questionable origin that sounds great in theory, but this is a lie.  It is an idealized flowery drivel that makes people feel good when searching for meaning in life.  I’m not saying don’t try for your dreams, but I am saying that reality rarely lives up to the fabrications we fill children’s minds with to inspire them for great things.  This may sound pessimistic, but I would argue that it is just simply a realistic view.  

I would rephrase it to say that we are nothing without our dreams, but if we don’t anticipate failure we will be sorely disappointed with our lives.  

Who am I to say anything about this?  I’ve been through my own list of dreams and failures, but overall I would say I’ve found a few things worth my time along the way.  It’s been more of a journey than a definitive choice.  Before we get into all that, let’s go back to the beginning….

Like any kid born in the 80’s I had quite a few inspiring things going on around me.  Listing them here it just becomes a bucket full of nostalgia:  Transformers, GI Joe, Nintendo, Legos, Ninja Turtles, Star Trek TNG, Sega, Terminator, Alien, Batman the animated series, The Sandlot, Demolition Man, Jurassic Park, Lion King, Aladdin, Ducktales, Darkwing Duck, Gummy Bears, Ren and Stimpy, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, and MacGuyver

There always seemed to be the overly smart character that could build anything in 5 seconds to save the day.  Fairly dramatic, but I wanted to be that person in real life.  I’ve always been a maker at heart, finding ways to be creative any way I could.  I spent my days building legos, cutting cardboard, working with coat hanger wire making what I wanted on the living room floor while I watched any number of tv or movies that inspire warm feelings to this day.  I’ve always wanted to understand every way possible to make things.  Every process, every tool.  This creativity and making in general has been one of the few constants throughout my life.

I’ve had a very difficult time figuring out one, singular thing to do with my life and I still do.  The first thing I tried was sculpture.  I wanted to become an effects artist and make monsters for a living.  The problem when you pursue things like this is that only a few succeed, and even those may struggle to live well despite doing what they love.  Only the lucky get to be the figurehead of success and even they may not be happy.  I can neither confirm nor deny this, but I feel it has truth to it.

At some point a more practical point of view was needed.  I had always been a tinkerer, a maker.  So why not make for a living?  After art, I became a machinist and learned everything I could about the trade.  CNC, CAD, CAM, mills, lathes, water jets, and laser cutters. Metal working is still a love of mine.  I feel the possibilities for this material are endless with thought and ingenuity.  It’s one of the most durable and versatile materials out there.

But at some point machining wasn’t enough, I couldn’t make a desirable living with this choice.  I needed more, so I went back to school for engineering and found a new love that built on all my past experiences.  Engineering put the science to the creativity.  To me, the two are interchangeable.  Numbers can define the creativity, assign a quantifiable nature to the abstract, while the abstract can bring a new perspective to the cold rationality of science.  To others, this may seem like a leap, but to me it makes the most harmonious sense.  Art and science can occupy the same space to create new and wonderful things.

After working for over a decade as an engineer, it’s still fulfilling, but doesn’t quite nurture the creative side as much as I would like.  It’s a perpetual need to make something new, to explore.  The problem is when you always seek the novel, the normality of the every day becomes boring. It’s difficult to be satisfied when there are potentially so many more wonderful things in your head or out there in the world.  It’s the equivalent of wander lust.  Once you travel, you get the bug.  You want to see everything the world has to offer and the desire will never die.  There is always something else you’ve missed.  

And even after you’ve seen everything, the need will persist.  

So after all of these ventures, I still find myself looking for more.  The jobs out there really just seem to be all the same.  The same old corporate atmosphere with the same problems and lack of creative outlets.  I can only determine the main reason for this is due to their main function.  These businesses are designed to do one thing well, make money.  Although money likes creativity when it’s widely appealing, it hates creativity when it’s not profitable at all.  But the best things that we love in society are not the things that initially started as a cash grab, they started out of a passion that a creative person had in their heart.  They had a desire to create something for the sake of creating.  Because they deemed something they envisioned to be deserving of becoming more than mere thought.  Before the evaluations of profitability and mass appeal, it was something a person made for the purest of reasons… for love.

If we go back to some of our favorite movies, we can see how there was, at some point, some heart to the creation.  A person was truly inspired to create something for the sheer love of it.  Then, after the creation was born, they pursued a way to manifest monetary value.  As a whole, we can tell when a movie, or music is made with the sole purpose of making money.  We can feel its hollow nature in our souls.

Now, back to the lies we’ve been told.  In this same vein, if we take something we love and start doing it for money, that love will most likely fade, wither, and die.  It will indeed become work.  Only the strongest love will survive, and even that may become tainted.  Unless the creation has already been made, doing what you love for money will diminish the very thing you care so much about.  This explains why musicians' sophomore albums are usually not as good as the first.  It’s either a product of the pressure to produce, or the result of creating not just for creativity’s sake.  Either way, you take something pure and reduce it to a commodity.  I’m not sure there is a pure way to be creative and make money from that pursuit.  If you love being a doctor, sure.  There’s a field ready for you to explore.  But I would be willing to bet that even in that job, you get to do the part you enjoy most only a fraction of the time.  Work will always be work.

You may be asking yourself, so what do I do then?  That answer is your own burden to bear.  It’s not exactly hopeless.  You will find things along the way that you enjoy, work that you enjoy or at least tolerate.  You may even find the perfect position that you want to stay in forever and die happy knowing you were successful.  I may never find what I’m looking for, but I will keep trying until I’m dead. The act of seeking inspires more hope than accepting that success will never occur. I have given up before and there was always a little voice in my head that wouldn’t be silent, telling me that I need to be creative. Cliche as it is, trying and failing is more true to who I am than taking the common road.

If any of this resonated with you, I write occasionally about making, thinking, and the pursuit of doing things well.  No filler, no spam--just honest thoughts when I have something worth saying.  You can find me here if you're interested.