Hello fuzzbutts!

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Mark Twain

It’s a nice sentiment and something a lot of people I’ve met are looking for. They have a specific thing they want to do with their lives. If you can just find that one job, everything will be smooth sailing and you’ll wake up every morning with the joy of going to work and no stress. Young minds can’t help but think about the eventual day they don’t have to deal with work

Unfortunately, life rarely works out like that for anyone. Work is work, and fun is fun. You can work in an industry that has meaning and purpose related to your goals, but your activities at work may not be anything you hoped for. Worse, some people convert their passion into their job, like art, and it ends up becoming a dreary existence as well. So how do you navigate this? Well, like the rest of life’s choices, you have to strike a balance or separate the two entirely.

Your job is just something you have a skill in and can make money from (science, accounting, art, organization, whatever). If you can’t find a way to get a job more related to your passion, then it’s time to work hard and play hard. Take the job and do it well. After work, it’s time to get moving on your passions. Like animals? Spend off-work hours volunteering at the humane society or donating to a conservation cause you care the most about. What about art? Fund your life with your job and work on your art at home. Want to travel? Save up those vacation days and pack those bags.

It’s hard sometimes when people try to work their passion and it ends up failing on them in an identity-crushing way. All that effort for their passion and the work turned out to be WORK! Work will always be work. I enjoy science but it’s not like I enjoy washing glassware half the day or seeing bad data pop out of the instrumentation. So I just do the job and do it well. After that, I can take time at the Food Bank to volunteer and help the less fortunate. I use some of my income and put it toward veterans too. Those are things that would be harder to accomplish if I was always looking around for a better job or some mysterious position somewhere in the universe where I’m incredibly fulfilled by a job that also doesn’t stress me out.

My advice for all fuzzbutts is: Take the check from whatever job you have, lousy or not, and use the other 72 hours (168hrs in a week, minus 40 for work and 56 for sleep) for your passion and things that help you experience purpose and meaning in your life.

Good luck, fuzzbutts!