Making what you want to do your job is probably not everything

Exactly one year ago, I thought about the relationship between work, money, and happiness. Now, I am standing at the continuation of that. I want to write down the realizations I have had here.

There are not a few people who consider "making what you want to do your job" to be the ideal way of working. Doing what you love, feeling a sense of fulfillment, being appreciated by someone, and earning money. That kind of way of working.

I think I myself have been chasing that for the past few years. Rather than whether it was a well-paying job or whether it was profitable, "whether I want to do it or not" became the primary criterion for choosing a job. With the feeling of verifying a hypothesis that doing what you want to do with joy, rather than doing what you don't want to do reluctantly, would increase performance and, as a result, produce good value and lead to good work (income).

In reality, "whether I want to do it or not" is not something that can be clearly divided into black or white, but rather a mix of shades of gray. Even so, I have chosen things that are as close to white as possible, where white actually exists.

You do what you really want to do even if you don't get paid for it

However, recently, I have begun to feel a crack forming between what I want to do and my work. Even if you are doing what you want to do, work is work. There is a responsibility that comes with receiving money. You need to say that there is value, and you need to have others think that there is value.

While my consciousness was taken up by "doing the job properly" in that way, "what I want to do" slipped out of what I call "work" and began to wander elsewhere.

In the end, what you want to do has nothing to do with money. You do it whether you get paid or not. Perhaps I have just realized that obvious fact at this late stage.

That might not be so much a failure to integrate what I want to do with my work, but rather that "what I want to do" has no choice but to change its appearance the moment it becomes work. At least, until you reach the level of a master where "what you want to do" becomes work while remaining "what you want to do."

When you start doing "what you want to do" as "work," things that are necessary because it is work get mixed in, and the purity of "what you want to do" decreases. And "what you want to do" with high purity seeks a place to belong elsewhere. For a while, I might be repeating that.

Sometimes it is easier to just treat work as a "job"

When what you want to do and your work separate, a kind of pain is born there. Even though you are supposed to be doing what you want to do as your job, you don't feel the energy. Even though you are supposed to be doing what you want to do as your job, your interest is drawn to other things... I am becoming unable to answer that contradiction myself.

At such times, I have also realized that it is easier to just accept it and treat work as a "job." Instead of forcibly attaching what you want to do to your work, you do your work as work. There is some backing of what you want to do there, but work is work. You make an effort to create value commensurate with the money you are paid. You put the emotional issue of wanting or not wanting to do it aside for a while.

That is by no means a bad thing. By treating work as a job, "what you want to do" can maintain its purity. If you are earning a proper income through your job, you won't be impatient even if "what you want to do" doesn't make money, and in fact, because there is no pressure of "because I am being paid," it can remain in its pure form.

What you want to do and your work, while flickering, stick together and separate

The relationship between what you want to do and your work is surely not fixed. Each moves, and the relationship between them also moves. Therefore, even if it seems that what you want to do and your work perfectly overlap at one time, I don't think that is necessarily the ultimate form or the final form.

What you want to do becomes your work. That sounds very good and has a happy ring to it. But sometimes, by separating the two, or by thinking that "it is okay to separate them," you might be able to maintain a healthy relationship.

That is what I am thinking about now regarding the happiness of work and income.

Even so, while hoping somewhere that eventually, what I want to do and my work will become a relationship like an old couple who have been together for a long time, walking hand in hand at the same pace.