Do what you love, and you'll...still work a lot, actually

What do Confucius and Marc Anthony have in common? Well, according to the internet, they both said “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” (As far as blog openers go, that’s pretty obscure, even for me - maybe I’ve been watching too much Only Connect over Christmas…)

And, full disclosure - not to insert myself into such lofty circles, but - I know that I’ve said this before too. I’m 100% sure I have done, because I used to subscribe to this view: that when you did what you loved as a career, it didn’t feel like work. It felt like fun. It felt like freedom. It was living the dream, and, accordingly, I should wake up every day and count my lucky stars every day that I get to do it.

Largely, of course, that’s true. Comparatively, my work feels less like work than a perhaps more traditional role would, for me personally. Doing what I love to do is fun, otherwise I wouldn’t love to do it; it does give me a sense of freedom I wouldn’t have elsewhere; and I do wake up every day and feel grateful for the work I get to do.

But the major difference that I now realise is, I don’t ‘get’ to do the work - I do the work. I put in the hours, and sometimes, oftentimes those hours are tough. Sometimes, oftentimes, even when it’s in pursuit of something that I love, I actively dislike it (read: tight deadlines, tax returns, anything that requires goals). They feel like work. And I say that as someone who’s full-time self-employed, not having to work on a side-hustle alongside another or a number of other jobs, and therefore has relative freedom to down tools when I have to and come back to it a bit later.

(That word: hustle. In the past decade or so, we’ve used the exciting, spicy-sounding ‘hustle’ – fast paced, thrilling, unpindownable, flashy, blink and you’ll miss it, Adrian Lester drinking cocktails in a London loft - as a rebrand for work, and working hard at that. That, the equally permeated ‘daily grind’ - with all of its connotations of skyscrapers and perfectly roasted flat whites from a moustachioed, denim-apronned barista in a coffee shop positioned at the base of the city’s most iconic bridge - and a whole movement of twee instagram quotes and sloganned deskware are somewhat the Horsemen of the Apocalypse when it comes to believing that work shouldn’t feel like work.)

But does this mean I don’t love what I do? Despite what Confucius and ol’ MA (the singer, producer and J-Lo’s ex-lover, not the Roman politician and Cleopatra’s lover) say: not in the slightest. I absolutely adore what I do, and can’t imagine myself doing anything else.

Before I end up sounding too smug or woe-is-me – two quite opposite things that I fear I’m somehow straddling simultaneously – I want to caveat this with the fact that I don’t have this figured out for myself, AT ALL. There’s a frequently-screenshotted tweet which says something along the lines of ‘dream job? My dream is not to labour at all’, and I think about it all the time, because…what would I do if not my dream job? Who would I be? Where would I derive all my personality and self-worth from? (Haha…seriously though. Work in progress, I promise!) Further than that, though I openly only about a quarter-jokingly blame capitalism for most things nowadays, thinking about what I am, and what the world is, without it, is as beyond my literal comprehension as the system is broken (that is to say; HUGELY.) (Though I constantly get more brilliant things to think about on this topic via my friend and fountain of all wisdom Kasey, founder of Proud Of My Period.)

However, what I have figured out, at least, is that so much of the enthusiasm-related corner of the internet - be it Pinterest, Instagram or Medium articles - seems to be related to this ‘do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’ school of thought. For something that, to me, feels so magical, so human, so spirited, so many of the top quotes on enthusiasm are from titans of industry about the working world as we know it and how to harness it in our careers. Henry Ford, for example, called enthusiasm ‘the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars’. Who knew he was so poetic?

More importantly (or at least, more directly impactable, for me), I’ve also figured out that I don’t want to add to this. Of course, I want to encourage people to do stuff they’re enthusiastic about: it brings me such joy, and I want that joy for you too (if you want it for yourself.) And if for you, that brings you money alongside joy, then I will be the first to cheer you on.

But if you would rather keep your passions un-monetised, then you’re still an enthusiast.

If you prefer a more ‘traditional’ career path, to allow you the time to do what you love outside of the 9-5, you’re still an enthusiast.

And if you do do what you love as a job, and you’re coming back from the Christmas break with a slight sense of foreboding and anxiety: you’re still an enthusiast. (Just an enthusiast who, hopefully, has rested good and proper, as you deserved!)

photo by Ashley Whitlatch on Unsplash