Keep Doing What You Love, And You Will Get Paid For It
I proved that to myself ten years ago, and I am proving it again another ten years later. What extremely few people from my circle know and only recently truly understood myself, is that a decade ago I was suffering from depression. It was never clinically diagnosed, but reviewing the context, all the signs and events, it is now clear to me that I was dealing with something severe, I just didn't know how to ask for help, wasn’t able to identify it, or perhaps too proud to even allow myself to suspect my never-ending dark gloominess had a name. So, I dealt with it. Myself. The way I knew how to. Or didn’t... Not really. It was more of an instinctive introspection that prompted me in 2011 to sit down and ask myself what’s up with me and why do I feel so pointless and out of place. Why is it that more things bring tears to my eyes than smiles to my face? And ridiculous as it may sound, it was because I had no point and no place.
The first time around
In 2011 I hit rock bottom. It did not involve alcohol, nor drugs, no vices were developed, nor did I act out. I was eerily silent about what was going on inside me. I was angry at the world that it gave me fewer chances than I presumed it did to others. I was sad that I could not see any real value in my own existence. I was screaming inside because I wanted to feel valuable. To myself, to those I cared about, and to society. I was crashing in my aunt’s spare bedroom in Spain, and my only refuge was the internet. The internet is an amazing thing, and I owe it a lot more than most people do, but it would have meant nothing had I not “met” Salman Khan through his TED talk from 2011.
I am not entirely sure what exactly triggered it but what I was left with was this thought that…
If you keep learning and doing the things you’re passionate about, you will become proficient and someone will eventually want to pay you for it.
That was an entirely new concept for me. I was raised in a society where you studied to become something that paid well, rather than studying something you enjoyed and becoming a master at it, whom people would want to pay. One could argue that the outcome — from a purely monetary perspective — is identical. I would argue that it’s not. One could train and become a mercenary because it pays really well, yet hate everything about it, and feel that all their income is tainted by not enjoying their work. One can actually become very good at a job, and not enjoy a single minute of it.
I think we can all agree though, that the alternative sounds a lot better, and I for one went for it. Within days I discovered Harvard University’s open courseware on Computer Science and the rest is history. A decade of software development later, I can definitely say, the recipe is real, and the recipe works. In fact, it works really well, I just needed a pandemic to realize it.
The second time around
Looking back at my life, I understood that programming was a late discovery. While rooted in a much more abstract passion for creating, I did have other interests before that, and one of them was writing. I started blogging at the age of 16. Back then it was more a ranting space than anything else. First as an angry teenager, then as angry young adult clueless, they’re dealing with a form of depression. It did land me some fame though, as in 2008 or so I landed a writer and music critic job at a top music site. It paid peanuts, but I did what I loved.
In 2019 I thought I’d take writing further. Write a novel. There’s an entire story behind how that idea came to be, but I did it. For nine months, nearly every day, I wrote. I wrote my heart out in about 400 A4 sheets. I got some feedback on the draft, mostly positive. While that novel currently still sits in a drawer waiting for a publisher to maybe it pick up, I did have a different idea. After all that feedback from my peers, stating I should write, I decided to do that here (and potentially Substack). Signed up for the Medium partner program, and a week later I cashed in a $209 cheque and a top writer vanity title.
It’s almost sad how surprised I was. Here I was trying to prove my theory (and a supposed myth) the second time around, and when it panned out exactly as the recipe would suggest it would, I find myself baffled. I am baffled not because I don’t believe in it, because I absolutely do, but rather because I, you and so many of us were brought up with very different life and success philosophies. I am in no way considering myself a model writer, but I did keep writing for years, and it turns out, not in vain. What I kept enjoying, I kept doing and became good enough that it now has a positive effect on my bank account.
That is some powerful stuff right there. Not because it suddenly means I might have a second stream of income, but rather because it proves yet again, that the world does find ways to pay you back for doing what you love. It might not be your main income, but doing the things you love, becoming proficient, and putting that value out there into the world, does get recognized.
In lieu of a conclusion, I’d like to pose a question. If passion and persistence are truly the secrets to a happier life, a more fulfilled existence, a point to us all, why is it that we have the tendency to shut it up, go for the more excruciating path of doing what we hate for the same outcome? I feel extremely lucky that I now found two of my passions in the space of a decade, and I get recognition for both, while others are still struggling with finding their interests and muse, but I feel like I should not feel lucky but rather part of a norm, where my story is just another of nearly 7 billion out there.
Attila Vago — Software engineer, editor, writer, and occasional music critic. Pragmatic doer, Lego fan, Mac user, cool nerd. JS and Flutter enthusiast. Accessibility advocate.
