“Do what you love”

*note: the shortcut to the end of this post is to read the essay “How to do what you love” by Paul Graham.

Well almost a year to the date since my last post. I figure I should probably get at least one post on the record for 2008 and if I stay motivated maybe a few more.

Over the past 4 months I have been focusing a lot more on investing. As a result of that I have been reading about well known investors their strategies, successes, and failures. I have found Warren Buffett in particular to be extremely interesting. Buffett in general keeps things simple, he looks for good values with proven earning ability, sticks to stuff that he understands and avoids high risk situations. In this interview with Charlie Rose he quips that he

“is lucky to get paid for doing something he would… pay to do”

.

Over the weekend I spent some time musing about the whole “Do what you love” dilemma. I feel quite fortunate that I discovered a love for technology at a young age and grew up in a time where this combined with some ambition has proven to be a pretty good hand to play. I can’t really imagine how I would be making a living and most importantly if I would be nearly as happy had I been dealt a different hand.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered “do I really love what I do”? I have never really hated any particular workplace, some I found more satisfaction in, some I like the co-workers better than others. Even when I was worked on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska doing hard labor 16 hours or more a day I was overall pretty content with my decision at that time.

But the point that stuck in mind is that I don’t wake up whistling dixie so excited to jump on the horse and think “I love what I am doing, I never want to do anything else”. At this point I found myself in what is probably not the typical “do what you love” dilemma that most people face. It seems like people have a tendency to try and figure out if they should do what they need to do to survive or if they should say “screw it” and “do what they love”. Take for example a musician or artist who may be working some soul sucking job instead of chasing their life’s passion. In my case I was trying to determine if I love what I do, or if I just feel that way because I haven’t done enough of what I hate. Or maybe there is something that I would *really* love to do, but having never felt that feeling I am assuming because I like what I do that I am doing what I love.

I should probably conclude with some self realization but I have yet to come to any conclusions about my current path :p However I did find some joy in reading an essay by Paul Graham titled How to do what you love.