Distance: 3 miles and home yoga
Ciwt was reading an article recently about Harvard's worst career advice to its graduating students: Follow Your Passion. Now in Ciwt's inbox is an article from the NYT titled 'Pursue Passion -- and a Paycheck.' So which is it?
Ciwt has pursued her passions several times with some interesting results. She owned and managed a bookstore, dragged carton after carton of books, day after day through the snow from the Post Office, put them up on the shelves, and then began all over the next day. It was backbreaking work with antiquated, time-consuming systems, earning a 'paycheck' of roughly $1. an hour. And... she never read a book while she owned the store, didn't have the time and needed to keep up with so many books all she could do was read blurbs about them and listen to customer reviews. (This was before the internet, but she doubts the book business is much less labor intensive today).
Then it was on to her art passion (the first time). Again that low paycheck, long hours, limited buyers, artists with at best bizarre notions of money and business - and this time during the sad, sad days of aids.
While teaching yoga, she kind of lost her personal practice.
The list goes on a bit longer, but the 'bottom line' is that her passions would not have supported her or a family. For the most part, passions are not lucrative if they even pay at all, and usually while you are pursuing that passion, it gets converted into a passionless money thing - at least for the time you are doing it for money.
All this being said, in retrospect, Ciwt values her opportunities to explore, have some fun, "see behind the green door" and learn more than she might have wanted to at the time about the realities of these various fields. She also values the way the 'paychecks' nipped at her heels and forced her to find other ways - basically investing in real estate and stocks - to pursue her even greater passion for freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment