Beyond teddy bears and rainbows the fuzzy math of doing what you love

Beyond teddy bears and rainbows the fuzzy math of doing what you love Barnes Noble //Yale Bookstore by hope scola and found via kind over matter Valerie Skinner was a recent Declarer who sent me a lovely email last week when she realized that the personal post she wrote a few weeks ago would be perfect for this very spot. Even though she was nervous to send it my way, she did (hooray for beating the Vampire!) and I absolutely agreed. Enjoy this guest post from Valerie! Do what you love and its evil cousin, Do what you love and the money will follow Ive been in a love-hate relationship with these mantras since eighth grade, unsure what I loved, then sure but frightened by naysayers, then buoyed by baseless optimism, and drowned in fearful pessimism going around in circles and never getting anywhere. A recent reading of  Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford confronted me with this phrase again.   It was such a powerful argument in favor of doing what you love, I had to wrestle with it.   As an aspiring novelist, confronting the staggering odds, its a hard one. After years of ignoring my dream, its become clear to me that this is what I want to do.   But dang, its scary!   And I find myself asking does it really make sense to do what I love?   Am I nuts? Should someone be rolling out the straight jacket soon? So I thought about it and developed my own hypothesis about doing what you love beyond the teddy bears and rainbows and into the rewards, the risk, the reality. Doing what you love in and of itself is no guarantee of monetary reward or greatness, and by greatness I mean sparkling achievement or innovation in your chosen field of work or artistic expression. Man, I wish it was. On the other hand, most people who achieve greatness actually do that on the basis of doing what they love. After all, it is difficult to reach greatness without doing what you love, because: Greatness requires mastery and dedication. Mastery and dedication require energy and time years worth of time 10,000 hours according to Malcolm Gladwell. And such a bonanza of energy and time requires passion, drive and enjoyment.   AKA love. Which means. drumroll, please! If you do not do what you love, you risk never achieving greatness. Hey! you might say, I dont really care about greatness.   Well, lets assume thats true, even so there are other risks too and if youre a creative, the risks are great.   You risk dissatisfaction, burnout, depression, loss of energy, and the worst of all, giving up your life, your time, to a whole buncha stuff you dont love. This is where Steve Jobs really got me! But at this point you still might not be sold.   The problem is that the odds of achieving at least monetary reward, if not greatness, seem stacked against us crazy dreamers. If you were a novelist, artist, musician, or inventor calculating your odds of success, wouldnt the logical conclusion be to pack it in, give it up, and do something practical?   But if every creative sided with logic, all the works of art and flights of fancy and inventions we all enjoy would cease to be. Innovation, invention, and creation is inherently risky. Ooh.   There it is risk.   And risk means heart-pounding fear and doubts that drag you down. So why? Why dance a tango with risk?   Because the odds are in your favor? No. Because you so love what youre doing youre willing to face that risk and stare it down, youre willing to dare it to get in your way. Now for the hardest part.   Since doing what you love is oh-so-often risky, you cant run out tomorrow and cast aside that food-on-the-table day job.   You have to keep doing whatever you do that keeps you fed while also doing what you love.   And thats the tension.   The balance. But this, this is the part where you can smile, because here you have your own little ace in the hole, where the odds turn in your favor.   Because doing what you love while doing your day job is hard and many people drop out here.   The people who win are the ones who persevere, pressing through to do what they love.   And if, if you can hack it, push it, and keep going with heart and soul, it is still risky, but you are now in a smaller elite group, youre in the outlast group, your face in the yearbook says most likely to succeed. But this is so hard! Working without immediate rewards, without guarantees.   What will get you through the hardness? Why will you keep going, keep learning, keep working, when reward is uncertain? It all comes back to love. Valerie is a creative, a dreamer, and an aspiring writer working up the guts to do what she loves while warding off the vampires of resistance. She blogs about her creative journey on Bohemian Season. **********************************************************************************************