When your Hobby is your Job

What happens when you consider work, life, and your life, work

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

It is common that when you start working, you would have some lesson on work-life balance or sorry life-work balance as the consultants say. But what happens when you consider your work, life, and your life, work. This is a case of “Jobby” (At least that is what I am calling it). It is when your hobby is actually your job. I know what you are thinking now, you think it can only be luck, such people are lucky. But I will share with you some perspectives on that, and yes my hobby is my job, and am feeling very blessed.

The truth is that every and anyone can get a job that is in line with their hobby if they are intentional about it at least early enough. I used to be a lover of electronics, in fact, I still am, but getting to University, it became my intentions to learn the language of machines and how to control them (programming aka coding aka software engineering) and that is how I got hooked on programming (The End). Long story short, I didn't take computer science, had to study real estate academically, but I study computer programming personally and when I graduated I didn’t apply for real estate jobs, I went straight for a computer science-related job. Although many will credit it to the fact that most computer science jobs don’t demand academic certification. Whichever way, you can be a bit stubborn about what you want, you will most likely get it.

Sometimes I sit and marvel at the endless possibilities in software engineering. I could be building a todo list, an app, a website, or some deep AI stuff, blows my mind any time. This seems phenomenon sometimes causes some anxiety and loss of focus, but after a bit of wrestling with possibilities, I always settle for the most exciting and valuable thing at that moment.

Perspectives

1. You will see possibilities in your job, but the same possibilities can overwhelm you especially if you are excited about them all.
2. Follow your passion is a strong word but nobody told you about laziness, fatigue, or lack of motivation. That stuff will cripple you. According to Dan Lok, success is more guaranteed if you are ready to give what it takes rather than just following your passion.
3. Fuse a hobby and a job and you get a repetitive hobby, and hobbies are not meant to be so. You will need to cope with that, maybe make a dynamic schedule, or spice things up.
4. If you enjoy your hobby too much, most likely you will outwork yourself trying to derive utility from that hobby. For example, I had to set up schedules to leave the PC after several work cycles in a day (I usually work in 30min/ 2hrs blocks).
5. If you like your work, you are very likely to skip rest, vacations and work-leaves and it is not advisable. No matter how much you love work you need time to refresh, reset, and reload.
6. Full retirement is a joke for when you like your work too much, you will probably do it till you die, although it can evolve in its form, you will still find a way to engage, whether as an employee, a business owner, a billionaire or an 80-year-old man.

I am very glad this concept came to mind because it can help you spot if you are on this boat and you can continuously make adjustments. One last time, if you don’t get the job you like, try to make the job you got the one you like, or just quit and pursue something else, either ways you need to work, you might as well enjoy yourself in the process.

Thanks for reading…