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Following one's bliss ::

In early adulthood I was fortunate to realize, if you do what you love, that was the important thing; everything else would follow in time. (And even if it didn’t, that was okay, because if one has food to eat and a place to sleep, and is doing what one loves, what more is there to want?)

What did I want to do for a living? I heard an interview with Todd Rundgren in 1981, when I was 19; his advice to young musicians was to become computer programmers. That was a pivotal moment. I looked at how much energy I had for fooling around with computers. I saw how the professional musicians around me seemed to grow more jaded and disillusioned with age; they weren’t doing what they loved, they were playing music for which they had little passion at weddings, and teaching lessons. It was easy to decide that I’d program to make money, so that I’d be able to play music on my own terms.

When the opportunity to work for Opcode came up in late 1986, that was another pivotal moment. Was there money in it? I wouldn’t know for a month or two; I was learning and assuming I’d work on a royalty basis. My then-wife was pregnant but still working. I revisited my earlier decision about music and programming. Clearly, writing music software was closer to making music than writing software to print lab reports. I was staying up until 7 am hacking away on my Mac 512, dragging myself in to work around noon, going home around 6 pm and working all night. I decided to “follow my bliss,” as Joseph Campbell would say, and soon enough the paychecks started. That became the most rewarding 12 years on a job I could have imagined.

There have been other leaps of faith that turned out well.

But part of reaching so-called middle age (and perhaps this is the definition of a “midlife crisis”) is finding one’s life full of distractions and drudgeries, things that were never part of that rosy ideal of being able to spend every day just doing what one loves. A few months ago I met Jane, a 37-year-old who told me, a bit sadly, that she fervently believed in “following one’s bliss,” but hadn’t yet figured out what it was.

One evening a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling worn-down and frustrated at how many hours seemed to evaporate without anything productive to show for them. I thought of Jane. “Do what you love” didn’t help her and wasn’t helping me in that moment. How can I do what I love when I’m overwhelmed by mundane tasks?

“Do what you love—and love what you do” seemed much better—we start wherever we are. It’s like the quote I came across in 2002: “The more you sit where you are, right now, and feel content with where you are at, the faster you will progress. It is a paradox.”

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