I’ve kind of gone with the flow most of my life, went to school, got a job, bought a house, all that. Never took any big risks, and never found myself loving my job or life so much.
Lately, I’ve been thinking I need to take more risks, find something I’m passionate about and go for it.
Problem - I don’t know what I want to do. If I had a burning desire to be a pastry chef or something, fine I can sell everything I own, go to school and try to make a go of it. My problem is more, I’m not sure what I even want, and don’t know how to figure it out.
Has anyone found a career or job that they just love? How did you find it, how did you know? Anyone ever suddenly change thier life or job around, say, just before they turned 31 for example?
I’m this close to a masters in explosives. I originally got into it as a student laborer at an energetic material research and testing center. My buddy was working there, I asked him if they were hiring. I probably got four or five other students jobs there during the time I worked there, and even one after I graduated. After about two years I moved into the engineering department, and I was hooked. I consider myself very fortunate that I picked the college I did.
No advice to offer, since you and I seem to be cut of the same thread somewhat. My problem isn’t that I’m not passionate about anything so much as I get very passionate about something, then once I have conquered it, I get bored.
I currently am actually pretty happy with my job. It doesn’t inspire me and I am still looking for a remote-kill button to help me deal with some of my more annoying customers, but it changes enough to keep me from being burnt out with it. That might change 12 months from now, who knows?
Maybe just try new things until you find the one that makes you scream “ZOMG!”?
BTW, Santo Rugger, that is friggin’ awesome. I got my son (now 9) into blowing shit up this year by buying him and my husband a few cheap supplies (black powder, duct tape, etc) and telling them “why don’t you blow something up?” It’s been a great learning/bonding thing for them, plus it helps to channel that natural tendency boys have for arson It’s been amazing to watch my son figure out the exact mix for the reaction he wants, I am very impressed with his logical thought processes when it comes to blowing shit up
I’m in the same boat as the OP. Before I got pregnant (just before my 30th birthday), I was a freelance writer and really passionate about what I was doing because I managed my own business. But once I got pregnant, I got a full-time job because my husband became a consultant at that time and we needed some security. I find myself in the same boat two years later and distinctly uninspired. Plus, one of us needs to be full time for the insurance. I think I’m going to start writing on the side again to give me something to work toward.
In answer to the OP, when I was writing, I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I kind of fell into it, though I had always wanted to be a writer. I dabble now, but since I have a full-time job, it too often falls by the wayside. I think that it’s good to try as much as you can with the time you have. Take calculated risks or just develop a side business or interest and learn how you can turn it into a career. It takes a lot of time and attention, but it’s worth it if it makes you passionate about your life. Just make sure you give your family the attention they need, too.
For what it’s worth, I will always be so glad that I freelanced for a couple of years. It was absolutely terrifying when I quit my job and jumped into contract writing full on. I didn’t know a thing about it except that I wanted to try it. Now it’s something I can jump back into if I want to get some extra cash on the side (and I am now making time to write, so hopefully this can grow into a business again) and something I can fall back on if something catastrophic should happen and I should be fired or quit.
You sound as if you’re talking about finding a vocation. A professor told me this relies on three things:
What you’re good at
What you enjoy
What the world needs (buckeyes!)
How do you figure those out? That’s a little harder. Off the top of my head I can think of talking to lots of people, self-reflection, private retreats, and drug usage (mostly kidding on that last one).
You could go to a vocation counselor. It is their job to test and to advise schooling or types of jobs for highschool kids who don’t really know either what they are good at and what they want to do with their life.
I can’t think of any of my serious interests that I could ever “conquer”. The peak of my passion and future career, the prehistory of my native lands, is a vast field awash with gaping holes of knowledge and unanswered questions. I can barely hope to make some progress in a selected fraction of it in my lifetime. This applies to my hobbies, too.
I’m honestly curious: what things have you conquered and got bored with?
Playing several different musical instruments – once I figured out the basics and realised if I wanted to, I could play any song (within reason), I grew bored. Programming, once I knew 4 or 5 languages, I realised that all I need is basic syntax and I can figure any of them out. Languages – I have learned to at the very least understand several languages, even if I can’t speak them fluently. It’s really stupid, what I do. When I say “conquered” – I don’t mean to expert level, I should have been more clear, I mean I get to a point where I feel confident in my ability to become expert level, so I get bored. I am like that stereotypical man that likes the challenge, but not the rewards – I will chase a thing until it is sure that I can get it then I am bored.
My list really is ridiculously long. What’s the saying? Jack of all trades, master of none?
Here’s another way to look at things: It is okay to have a job that is just a job - tolerable, pays the bills, but not your dream. Not everyone’s job is their driving passion in life. It is okay to decide that your true job goal is to find something that has the flexibility or financial pay-off to allow you to pursue your true interests/passions in your free time (even if your true passion is simply spending time with your family/loved ones, that is a good thing).
In fact, I think sometimes making something you enjoy as a hobby into your full-time job can take the pleasure out of it. Most jobs become full of either dull routines and/or tiresome stress after a while. I think it’s better sometimes to put in your time at your job, then come home and really start living.
That’s me. All my life I’ve wanted to learn stuff well enough that I could say “I can do [this]”, then I’d lose interest and move on to the next challenge. I had friends in college that wanted to be the foremost authority on whatever, and would shake their heads in disbelief when I told them I wanted to be competent in as many things as interested me.
It’s because of my grandfather. He could do pretty much anything, and I always admired it.
Go back to school. You can take continuing education classes at your local community college. Take courses in a variety of subjects. Something might jump out at you.
Also, there’s nothing wrong with being a Jack of all Trades. As long as you’re making enough money to support yourself, have fun with all the interests you have.
I can’t tell you what to pick, but I can give a little related advice: sometimes it’s good just to pick something and stick with it, even if you’re not sure that it’s the “ideal” career. Too many choices can be paralyzing, but it’s better to be working toward some concrete goal than to remain in limbo because you can’t make an obvious choice. You can always switch careers later if you discover that option #1 was a mistake. Life is big and complicated and needs to be explored – I never understood people who knew what they wanted to do without trying it first. Take your time and enjoy the journey, and don’t let yourself stress out because you don’t have all the answers right away. If you don’t figure out what you truly want to do with your life until age 85, then your life will still be a success, because most people never get that far.
I’m in the same boat as the OP as well, but a little younger. I feel like I’m just drifting through a very dull life a lot of the time (although I’m very glad I haven’t had excitement of the bad kind. I’ll be paying close attention to this thread.
I think part of my problem is that I’m not really passionate about much.
I find that this sort of advice isn’t very helpful. A similar tagline I’ve heard is, “make your work something you enjoy and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
The problem with this is that the world doesn’t need (and won’t pay) anyone who would like nothing more than to do nothing all day but read, watch tv, exercise, and bang attractive blond girls in their young 20s.
Given these interests, I suppose I could be a professional reviewer, a tv critic, a personal trainer, or a porn actor. But I have no interest in writing about what I read, I have no interest in writing about what I watch, I have no interest in dealing with all the people who come to a personal trainer, and I have no interest in sexing up on camera as an occupation.
I worked as a programmer and computer teacher for many years. It was good money and intellectually satisfying, but not inspiring.
Then, in my mid-thirties I decided to completely change direction and took a job in chess administration.
That was not successful (not my fault!), but because of it about a year later I got offered a job teaching school chess full-time. I expanded it to include teaching roleplaying and computer games and have had a fantastic 20 years teaching kids my interests.
Music makes me dance, cry, sing, smile, and laugh. I feel it in my veins when it goes well.
Teaching is dynamic. I love to help people. It makes me feel good about myself because I know I’m doing a service to the world.
Combining the two has led to an incredible profession…I feel like a Jedi sometimes; always learning something new about these two sacred and ancient professions.
I’m also in a similar boat to the OP, but I’ve actually tried something–I was studying journalism, but realized that while I like many aspects of it, there are some key abilities that I simply suck at. My mind doesn’t work in the right way. If only it hadn’t taken six years of depression creeping up on me for me to catch the clue…
I’ve never really been passionate about anything, and have a hard time sticking to any one thing for long. I’m also chicken-shit shy, which makes job hunting hard. I think my biggest issue is lack of drive.
I think I was born knowing what I wanted to do. I don’t ever remember not writing stories and poems and I started playing classical violin at age seven and switched to classical guitar when I was 15. I sing/write/play (I play other instruments too, piano, woodwinds, and so on, but not as well as the guitar and violin), and I took two years and got an advanced degree in photography. I also became an N.D. but that took fourteen years because I was busy in the missionary field and raising my own family, so I did it piecemeal. Still, I did and still do what I’ve done all my life. I grew up with natural medicine so getting the degree was just going through the motions and learning the actual chemical makeup of everything. (Don’t laugh, it’s fascinating stuff!)
I did not PLAN to become a missionary, but at eighteen I was smack in the middle of the missionary field, and I look back and wonder how that happened in the midst of my music career and think God laughs when I do. In retrospect, I can see the transition far earlier than that, but I had no idea I was being groomed for using music, writing, photography, and all other gifts given to support a ministry that would preach the Word and feed orphans globally.
I met my husband on a piano bench in a recording studio and now laugh at all the things I think I planned in life. I’ve had very little to do with any of it, but it’s been an awesome ride so far. I used to go to church by myself when I was five and don’t remember not talking with God. Odd, when one considers that my family was irreligious and looked upon me with disdain for going to church and reading the Bible and all the other things I did before I had a clue why I was doing them. Still, my great-grandmother was a missionary, though I didn’t see her often, perhaps once or twice a year for a day or two. I knew we were kindred spirits but I didn’t know whey - not then.
So, I think some of us a born with our lives mapped out for us, an insatiable curiosity about God, good, The Creation, and all people. I love music, I’ll write novels and poems 'til the day I die - or lose all my marbles, whichever comes first, and I’ll write and sing songs for as long as I’m able to, same goes for playing my guitar. I’ll never retire, I was never meant to, some things you just know about yourself. I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best musicians and writers in the world and I’ve learned something from every one of them. A song I wrote when I was eighteen is still sung in every country I know of and I just put it out there - before RCA, and I’ve no idea how that happened.
I could go on, I suppose, but the point is, yes, I was born with a purpose, and I was excited about it, impassioned, even if I didn’t know how the jigsaw would fit together in later years. I didn’t even know there was a jigsaw, I just took one step at a time, and I’ve had a ball!
Even amongst the misery of a pretty rotten childhood, God watched over me and guided my every step - and I didn’t realize that until years later.
Still here, still blessed, and still doing it for Jesus!
It’s been amazing to watch my son figure out the exact mix for the reaction he wants, I am very impressed with his logical thought processes when it comes to blowing shit up 