A friend of mine, Marcy King, made a comic about how she’s dealing with her art work catching up to her day job work, wondering if she’ll be “successful” before or after art overtakes her day job. It made me think about a couple things, but first, here’s the comic:
I’d love to pay the bills with art alone, but for the time being a full-time job is necessary for now! I’m basically not gonna worry about it for right now and work on it moving forward… pic.twitter.com/4Rxt4umXuH
— Marcy King 🦀🍊👑🍀💦🔮 (@MarcyKingUltra) November 29, 2022
The first is a notion I heard early on in my life: “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
A long time ago, I used to believe that. It justified making a career out of what I found fun. But what I realized from interacting with lots of people I’ve worked with over the last 20 years, is that making a career out of what you love to do can make it no longer fun. Part of the reason what you enjoy is enjoyable is because it’s not tied to income. You don’t do it because you make money from it, you do it because you love to do it.
The second thing is that success is a metric only you can define for yourself. For me, I’ve determined it means doing what I want to do every day. If I’m spending my time doing the things I want to do, then I’m successful. I’ve pinpointed three attributes that make me feel fulfilled every day: seeing someone I care about, eating something delicious, and making something for myself.
Success is not just money or work. It’s about living your life how you want to live your life.