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Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#41

I found my passion by getting really pissed off. One day I was sitting at my windows xp box and I wanted to do something really stupid/simple. I wanted to change all the icons for a application so it would fit my theme. Long story short I ended up switching to ubuntu learned to program and learned more about operating systems and networking then I ever should have. Now as a software developer I find my passion is dri…

That's quite an interesting idea. I'm sorry if this comment does not have much substance, but you gave me an epiphany. Thank you. I will try to do that for myself too!

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#43
I don't know that I've found things which I'm passionate about as much as I've found things I enjoy, or which intrigue me, and I pursue obsessively competitively in order to excel. Whatever it is, I become fairly skilled at it, through sheer determination, persistence, and immersion, then for one reason or another I move on - no financial reward, I find the point where genes separate the men from the boys, etc. I'm a programmer for a living. I enjoy doing my own programming, not so much work programming, but partly do it simply because I've been doing it since the zx81 - "... if you're warm and happy in a pile of crap, keep your mouth shut" - or something. The Helsinki Bus Theory seems worth mentioning in this conversation: https://jamesclear.com/stay-on-the-bus .

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#44

One part accident, one part research. I took a college class that cast a lot of light on things that I had thought were "normal" for people like me, but weren't. Then I researched what my options were for doing something with X that met Y parameters.

Could you elaborate on this?

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#45
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what to learn from this.

You may need two jobs for a brief amount of time. One that pays the bills. Another that drives your passion. Think of your first job as "bootstrapping" your second job. Just make sure the first job doesn't take so much effort that you have no energy left to do what you really want to do.

My point was that finding your passion may not result in a viable career. I have tried to bootstrap the second job but it has always failed. My guess is that this is the case for most people and only a lucky few manage to turn their passion into a career.

If Einstein hadn't been Einstein he may have failed in physics work and stayed a bored patent clerk forever. I bet this happened and is still happening to a lot of people.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm same as you, but I'm actually getting tired of it. Everytime I encounter a problem, I start compulsively thinking in this direction, scaling it during the process, eventually getting frustrated about my inability to implement necessary changes.

I feel you. Food production is a big one with me right now and I've been drastically reducing the animal products in my diet and switching to less processed foods (black beans have become my staple). I find writing can help manage it a bit, in fact I just finished a piece on food production and indoor farming https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2018/7/8/tackling-t...

What are some good things to do with black beans?

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#47
My passion used to be programming. I went back home and programmed or read stuff about programming. After close to 10 years in job market, I think it's not so great idea after all. It was much harder to de-stress. I took problems at work too personally. I sometimes made work decision that weren't unbiassed enough. Now I think that no matter how much you like your work, for long term personal well being do not do it at home.

My current after work hobby in an unlikely place. Precision rifle competitions. It's very scientific sport in nature - winning is pretty much about forecasting flight of your bullet, that involves lots of physics, statistics and controlling 10s of different variables. Recent king of 2 miles competition looked more like science olympiad: http://precisionrifleblog.com/2018/07/05/what-the-pros-use-k... .

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#48
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

Einstein is not just another person, right? The man had amazing perseverance. Not everyone is like that. But I am genuinely curious to know how lesser known, and the more average kind of person deals with this. Because I feel like I might end up being in the same situation judging from my current progress.

Look, I "bootstrapped my brain" all my life…maybe because I was lazy or impatient and wanted quick solutions.

On HN, I see lots of amazing individuals with great education, work experiences using "expensive" vocabulary.

I am not one of them. I was below average in school but "bootstrapped" my professional life using my personality and my imagination. I ended up creating something beyond my wildest dream.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#49
Honestly, I started w/ my pain. What caused me to struggle the most often goes against my core values. It wasn't until I sat and jot down "why" my recent problems escalated so quickly and had a greater negative impact. Often my new problems were mirroring old problems. It was then that I realized my beliefs. This is where I stood during adversity. What I was willing to fight to protect and nurture. It's why I'm willing to stop every bad habit just so I don't become its bottleneck. It's my compass for every decision. Your passion has a direct correlation to your pain. Start w/ your pain, verbalize it instead of being reactive. Once you know the words at least you can go to thesaurus.com and use the antonyms as a start to explore your passion ;-) Good luck and much joy to ya!

Also, passion isn't just a burst of energy, excitement or full of woo-woo emotions. It's strategic, empathetic, intelligent, loving, strong, and actionable. Plus reading/listening to Start with Why is helpful AF! Much success to you on your journey!

resource: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17447384-start-with-why

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#50
post #44

One part accident, one part research. I took a college class that cast a lot of light on things that I had thought were "normal" for people like me, but weren't. Then I researched what my options were for doing something with X that met Y parameters.

Could you elaborate on this?

I was a homemaker, military wife and homeschooling mom. I returned to college and took two classes and CLEPed some others to lock in my old college credits so I wouldn't have to start over from scratch if I ever got around to going to school again. If your classes are too old and you didn't complete a degree of some kind, they won't take them as transfer credits.

One of the classes I took was an online Environmental Biology class (possibly not the correct name of it). The big project for the class was to plan a residence in the middle of nowhere that didn't have existing infrastructure, like electricity and sewer, and how you would support yourself in the middle of nowhere. I immediately knew that half of my answer was "Build an Earthship."* This clued me that, no, not all homemakers are fascinated with alternative energy, passive solar design, etc as some means to save money and so forth.

I decided that quarter that I wanted to do something career-wise with the built environment. I pulled out a big book of college info on various universities in the US and scoured it for majors having to do with the built environment.

Architecture was on the list, but architecture programs generally are self-contained and do not take transfer credits of general ed classes. I would have to start completely from scratch.

Civil Engineering was on the list, but required multiple Calculus classes. Although I had a strong math background, I had dropped out of calculus my first quarter in college and never wanted to see it again.

I think there were about six or seven majors on the list. After going through all of them, I settled on Urban Planning as the degree program and career that interested me. Most Urban Planning degrees are Masters programs, not Bachelors. That fall, I enrolled in an online BS in Environmental Resource Management.

At some point, my life was derailed by a serious health crisis and divorce. I never completed my BS degree, though I did later get a Certificate in GIS (equivalent of Masters level work) and I moderated a planning sub-forum for a time that I founded on what was, at that time, the world's foremost planning forum. I currently do some volunteer work at a non-profit that is pertinent to this interest and I have a very part-time job with the same non-profit.

I don't know if this will result in a planning job (unlikely, since I have no driver's license) or exactly where I am going with this, so I didn't really want to get into the details because, in some sense, it is currently a failed dream. But I felt the basic model of "have epiphany, then do some research to flesh it out" might be a useful thought for some people.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

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