Turning Your Passion into A Career is Destructive

It is an artist’s dream of turning one’s passion into a source of income. It is a dream that often unfolds into a nightmare.

Once your passion becomes your job, your fantasies of turning your favourite hobby into a money-making venture slowly dissipate when you’re met with a cruel reality. Just like your previous car-washing job, the hobby that once gave you immense joy becomes another tedious, laborious job.

Like all those turning their passion into a career — you’ll be met with repetitive work, increasing failure, and poor profit. This will bring downright misery.

That passion you once held for music, art, writing, or baking will slowly wither away.

The slogan, “follow your passion, and the money will come” must’ve been uttered by an overly-optimistic, naive dreamer who probably came from old money.

I know this pessimism is weary to read but it’s necessary. I’ve nursed false hopes for too long and it’s been a destructive force in my life. Like all those wanting to profit in a creative career, I nursed idealistic plans only to see them crush into dust. After writing week after week, I experienced severe burn-out and stopped writing.

Here’s the truth… ‘follow your passion’ is bad career advice and this is why.

No, it’s not boredom you’re going to feel after doing it day after day. You will seriously start to loathe the passion that once fueled your soul.

Imagine yourself in this scenario. You love baking cheesecake and you’re good at it. After weeks of planning and day-dreaming, you make the decision to sell cheesecake online. The first few weeks go well with a customer here and there but most of them are friends and family. Suddenly, there are no more buyers and you’re making no profit. You get sad and frustrated. You dip into your savings to make ends meet. To make matters worse, a customer complaint destroys your self-esteem and confidence. Maybe starting a cheesecake business was a bad idea after all.

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