As a young girl, people would always tell me to “follow my passion.”
“Do something that makes you happy,” they said as I doodled in my notebook at 12 years old. Growing up, I found reassurance that no matter what, hard work and passion was what it took to succeed in the world.
That changed when a video caught my attention called “Don’t follow your passion.”
“What do you mean don’t follow your passion?” I thought as I hit the play button on YouTube.
The video showed Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe presenting a very different opinion.
“Every time I watch the Oscars I cringe… who tells a stranger ‘never give up on your dreams’…without knowing what they’re dreaming.”
He titled his lessons “the dirty truths.”
Lesson one was more of a cold, hard, truth than a dirty one.
“Just because you’re passionate about something, doesn’t mean you won’t suck at it,” he said.
I thought back to the time I was passionate about an activity and how quickly it changed over the years.
At 14, I wanted to be an artist. I spent hours late at night drawing characters from my favourite TV shows. My friend could draw characters from scratch and I badly wanted to be like her.
At 16, my passion turned to rock music and I tried to learn how to play guitar.
Both fickle spurts of passion ended with me finding passion through the pen.
Think about all the people who get rejected from American Idol, Rowe said. The world is full of people who suck at singing but think they can.
“Dream jobs are usually just that, dreams.”
That was where I ended my drawing and music career, although I loved doing both, I was like the rejects on American Idol. When I thought back to my years in university, I found his opinions made sense. I was able to pay for almost a year of schooling with scholarships I applied for that while no one else did.
The same goes for my position at The Morning Star. A friend and I both looked at the position, before he decided to go home for the summer.
He went home and I got the job. I realized watching Mike Rowe that I had been following opportunities all along.
“When people follow their passion they miss out on all kinds of opportunities they didn’t know existed,” said Rowe.
Whether you’re passionate about the job or not depends on you.
“Your happiness on the job has very little to do with the work itself,” he said. No one grows up dreaming of being a window washer, or a septic cleaner, but these jobs need to be done and finding unique opportunities allows you to expand your knowledge and resources.
Follow opportunity not passion, the final dirty truth.
It’s good to be passionate when it comes to hobbies but when it comes to job opportunities, as Rowe said, “never follow your passion but always bring it with you.”
