I don’t know how it is for most people, but for me the daily grind is such a soul sucking experience it’s extremely difficult to come home and have much desire to do anything besides relax and pass the time until the next work day rolls around. I’m not saying that my job is horrible.  Far from it. It can be challenging and rewarding at times. It even pays fairly well. There was even a time when I was much younger that I believed that having a job that I didn’t like would be doable long term if the pay was there. I have since learned differently. It has actually been a fairly interesting personal learning experience. In my case, I’ve come to realize that once I have the money to pay my bills and save for retirement while still having a bit left over for my hobbies, interests, etc., the money on top of that does not make up for a frequently miserable existence.

That’s not to say everything is horrible and I hate life. No, this dissatisfaction is more subtle. As the days grind on, it has slowly become apparent that my life is going nowhere. The life I want to live and envision on a regular basis is on hold due to reality. There’s little use denying the facts as they stand. The job market is terrible and is likely to remain so for quite some time. Those of us with steady employment are lucky. No way around that, even if it doesn’t feel that way most of the time. The alternatives are far worse. After all, who really gets to make a living doing what they love? Who indeed?  For that matter, how many people actually know what they love doing? I’m not talking about just entertaining ourselves to pass the time. I’m talking about a passion. Something that moves us beyond measure. That inspires us. How many of us have actually found whatever this is? How many of us recognized it for what it was? From there, how many had the courage to pursue it against all odds? Damn few.

So now I return to my situation. I am most certainly not doing what I love for a living. For that matter, I’m not sure of exactly  what I could be passionate about as a career. I would think that it couldn’t feel like a job. A job is something you do because the alternatives don’t bear thinking on. You get up five or more days a week, likely after not getting enough sleep, and go to work. You do you thing. You try not to think about what you’d rather be doing throughout the day. You distract yourself by commiserating with your coworkers, not looking at the clock, trying to lose yourself in your work for as long as possible. Anything to make the day pass more quickly so that you can trek home and not think about work for a few short hours. If you were to feel this way about something you had been passionate about, that passion would die a quick and horrible death. So the trick seems to be to find that passion and somehow make that work for you. Make it a success to the point where you can do that for a living because it is what you want to do. That is quite a trick though.

In my case, I have a few ideas of things I could possibly do that I might truly end up being passionate about. How do I go about trying these ideas out? How can I keep my regular job, do my regular job, then come home and take up my passion with the energy and creativity it needs to survive? I’ve actually thought about this long and hard. What can I do to make this happen? How can I motivate myself to do what I dream when the dream dies a little more with every passing day? When the enormity of the effort needed for the dream seems enough to crush hope? I have been searching for the answer for some time. Searching outside myself, casting about in a vain attempt to find a ready made solution. It is only recently that I have come to a dawning realization: there is and will never be a quick fix for such a task. The answers will never be found with someone or something else. I am stuck. I am unhappy. I can’t keep this up indefinitely. This is my problem. The world doesn’t care and really shouldn’t care. It’s time I start looking to myself for the answers to my problems. After all, even if I can’t solve all of the problems I perceive in one fell swoop, I can make the many small decisions and take the small steps needed to begin fixing them. Bit by bit, I can build the life I dream of. Once again, I find that I already have at least some of the answers, even if I don’t always like what they are.