#careeradvice #findyourpassion #photographylove #creativecareers #successinyourpassion
As a junior in high school, facing the pressure of choosing a future career path can be daunting and overwhelming. Many individuals, like yourself, grapple with the question – is it really so important to find a career that you love? 🤔 The desire to pursue a passion while also ensuring financial stability and success is a common struggle for many young adults.
## The Dilemma of Choosing Between Passion and Practicality
### 🎨 Following Your Heart: The Love for Photography
For some, the thought of turning their passion into a career brings fulfillment and purpose. Your love for photography serves as a creative outlet and a source of comfort in dealing with anxiety. The idea of making a living through capturing moments and expressing emotions might seem like a dream come true.
### 💼 Practical Realities: The Challenges of a Photography Career
However, the harsh reality of the photography industry can be discouraging. The competitive nature of the field, coupled with financial uncertainties, raises doubts about the feasibility of pursuing a career solely based on passion. The average salary of photographers in Canada may not provide the stability needed to support yourself independently.
## Exploring Alternative Paths Without Sacrificing Your Passion
### 🌟 Finding Balance: Leveraging Creativity in Graphic Design
While your mom’s suggestion of pursuing graphic design may seem like a practical alternative, it doesn’t resonate with your true passion for photography. However, it’s essential to consider the potential benefits of a career in graphic design, which offers a higher success rate and greater financial stability.
### 🤔 Deciding Your Future: Striking a Balance between Passion and Practicality
Navigating the crossroads between following your heart and considering practicality is a challenge that many individuals face. It’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons of each path and find a balance that aligns with your values and goals.
## Is Doing What You Love Truly Important?
### ❤️ Pursuing Fulfillment: The Value of Passion in Your Career
Ultimately, the importance of finding a career that you love lies in the fulfillment and satisfaction it brings to your life. While financial stability is essential, prioritizing your passion and happiness can lead to a more meaningful and impactful life.
### 🌈 Embracing Uncertainty: Taking Risks for Your Dreams
Taking a leap of faith to pursue your passion may involve risks and uncertainties, but it also opens up the possibility of achieving your dreams and leaving a lasting impact through your work. It’s essential to believe in yourself and your abilities, even when faced with challenges.
In conclusion, the journey of finding a career that you love is a deeply personal and introspective process. While the practical realities of the job market may impose limitations, never underestimate the power of pursuing your passion. Whether you choose to explore photography, graphic design, or a different path altogether, remember that your happiness and fulfillment should always remain at the forefront of your decision-making process. Embrace the uncertainty, follow your heart, and trust that the right path will unfold before you. 🌟
Doing what you love is complete bullshit.
More like: find something you can tolerate which pays well enough to do the things / spend time with people you enjoy in your free time.
No fuck all that I wanna male the most money idc doing what
No. Read So Good They Can’t Ignore You. It squashes this passion is your purpose thing. You grow into your passion / purpose under certain working conditions. Just read it.
Few people actually enjoy their jobs.
The vast majority are “fine” with their careers, a little bit more or less.
If you can find a job you love, awesome.
Just don’t get stuck in something you dread going to everyday.
How many people love school? Most just do it and get through it and it’s “whatever”
Not as important as finding a career that pays, or a career that’s stable, or a career with reasonable work time. What were we talking about again?
Doing something you love to pay the bills/make money can take a lot of the joy out of it.
I don’t think it’s unwise to get career that will pay the bills that is somewhat related so you can still do what you love on the side, this way photography is still your happy place and you can always invest more time into it as you see fit.
Not really. You are selling hours of your life for money to live. Get as much as you can!
If you are lucky you find what you love doing.
Most of us work to pay bills and get a salary that allows us to do something else we love doing.
And over time what you want from work can and will usually change. So you can have many careers over decades you age.
It may not be important to find it, but it’s important to at least try to look for it.
Look up ikigai
Never do what you love, you will be doing more work for less pay, and will come to hate it. Find a career that you can tolerate. Then do what you love just to make yourself happy.
Find a job that supports your needs and gives you some money to pursue your passion in your free time. That’s the key.
I’m a rare example of making a career out of what you’re passionate about. I always knew I wanted to be a writer; I’d been writing since I was 7 years old or so. So mid-University I changed majors and went for Journalism.
I’ve made a 23-year career (and counting) out of it. And nothing makes me more blissful than writing a story.
However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a demanding career, you have no time for family or kids (I’m single and childless) and the schedule is unpredictable.
I was OK with that up until my thirties. Now I’m closer to my fifties and wonder if I made a mistake. Even more so, the pay is trash and I have no savings.
I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, but knowing what it entails I should’ve stuck to a money-making career and kept writing on the side.
Photography is amazing (I do it for fun) but it doesn’t pay. You’d have to work like a horse just to build a name because that’s your ticket. You can potentially be jobless for months. The first months before the new fiscal year are a nightmare for photographers because no one wants to spend money before the new cycle hits. I know all this from a former friend who’s a professional photographer, respected and well-liked, but who has gone into periods of insanity for lack of income.
Weight your options. I wish you the best.
No you are more than a job or career. Do not let your work consume you. Find work that is interesting that allows you to live a reasonable lifestyle and save money. Learn to live your life every day not always looking to future.
Yes it is. Imagine that you gonna spend an important amount of time in your career 8 to probably 12 hours 5 times per week. That’s a lot. Choose a career that interests you.
You say that you love photography, go for it. Photography nowadays is a job not a hobby. Photos are important for all the media and marketing campaigns. You can make it a job. I know people who chose photography and now they are making more money than me.
People are paying freelancers for professional editing of videos, photos and elements. With the rise of social media photography became a popular job.
No matter what you do, you won’t want to get up in the morning. And, getting up in the morning is the hardest part.
So, no, it isn’t important to love your job.
If you don’t love your work, you’re going to be miserable.
You do realize you don’t have to do the cookie-cutter jobs that are already out there pre-labeled as “photographer”, right?
I’m 62 years old. I had the same ideas. Get a good job, make lots of money. Enjoy my hobby. Horses. Guess what. The job was so demanding, there was no time for the horses. And I hated the job. Yes, the money was good, but I was miserable.
I had to get creative in my industry & come up with a way I could work with horses & make it into a career.
35 years later I’m doing just that. And have no plans to ever quit.
No.
A few things that I’ve found:
1. You must be able to find enjoyment in what you do in some way. Otherwise work becomes an unending nightmare. Even one small component or set of tasks that you like is really all you need.
2. Every job has an element of grindy/terrible parts. It’s the nature of things that need doing at sufficient volume: there’s a volume of it to do.
3. What you like will change over time. The wondrous will become mundane and mundane wondrous as your skills, attention and perspective changes. For me, this hits around the 3-4 year mark in any given position.
4. True mastery comes with the ability to command a payday that respects that mastery, but ultimately you may get bored as it’s mostly repetition if you stay there.
Hard truth but the amount of people who can work their “dream job” and earn a relatively high level of money is a slim minority. Going to college for photography is a risk because if it doesn’t work out the degree doesn’t give you a ton of transferable skills, and not having a job will suck major time.
Any responsible adult will tell you to spend the money and those 4 years on a degree that would get you a job. CS, stats or Econ seem to be the safest bets right now. They’re not telling you this to quash your dreams, they’re just speaking from their own experiences of having experienced failure and life. The question you need to figure out is: do I love photography enough to sacrifice money and stability and the things that come with it (vacations with friends, home ownership, supporting a family/partner) if it doesn’t work out? The second question is: if I did photography for 40+ hours a week, working with demanding clients, will I still enjoy it? From personal experience, I turned a hobby into a job and started hating it, it suddenly wasn’t an artistic escape anymore, I was listening to pushy clients telling me what to do. Ive also heard similar stories from peers. I’ve found my ideal balance is a job that doesn’t creep into my personal hours too much and allows me time to indulge my passions on the side.
My most practical advice is to start freelancing, put out ads that you’re looking for clients, network, grow your socials. You won’t know whether you enjoy a job until you’re doing the thing.
Doing what you love is one of the greatest things you’ll ever get to experience, but just take your brain with you when you follow your heart. Being in high school is still very young, but these are the years where you get to fail and people won’t blame you for it. Good luck!
Nope. Find a lifestyle.
Don’t care about the things I do but I’m remote, barely talk to people, no travel, 40 hours, take time off when I feel like it, no stress.
That’s all I ever wanted in life.
Work isn’t supposed to be fun and exciting everyday. I don’t know where this idea came from all of a sudden.
Hey there!
I took graphic design classes in highschool, nothing else ever clicked for me so I did design in college and went on to get a BFA degree
I love my work and I’m very passionate about it
The pay is shit
I deeply regret my degree
I’m finally to a point in my career I should be able to get a senior position, but it still will pay much less than my friends are making with LESS EXPERIENCE.
People on here will say things like “money will figure itself out” or to focus on doing a career you enjoy
My advice is the opposite. Money will not figure itself out, life is expensive, find a career that pays so that when you have time away from work you have the money to enjoy it
Money absolutely buys happiness
It’s impossible to know what you’ll enjoy doing that will pay the bills. Choosing your hobby because you love it may not pay the bills. Most of us have no clue what 1000s of occupations entail. Especially if still a teenager.
Consider a safer path that you don’t love but might like (passion and love is for marriage, not a career choice). Being able to enjoy your work most days is a reasonable goal.
So get training or higher ed in a known occupation that you potentially like and can support yourself with AND pursue your photography. You need not pay tuition to become a great photographer.
If your photography takes off then awesome and if not, you have a way to financially support yourself.
“You gotta do what you love” just reinforces this bizarre concept that the only thing that matters in life is working, so love (a thing we all generally aspire to) must be part of working. You just have to do what you have to do to earn your living and hopefully have a life you feel fulfills you. It doesn’t have to be something you “love.”
No. Make $.
Do what you can tolerate that gives you enough time and money to do what you love.
Why do jobs in healthcare always require you have to have passion and that willingness to help people.
Depends what kind of person you are. Personally, I’m absolutely miserable when I’m not enjoying the task that quite literally takes up more time and attention than any other thing I will do in my life. But like if you don’t care about doing something you don’t care about for 8+ hours a day, then that’s on you. Tons of people are seemingly content just kind of meandering through a job they vaguely dislike and just maximizing their non-working time, but personally, I think it’s wise to try and maximize both.
The difference between finding a job you like and just a job you’re vaguely content with is simply effort. It’s not about choosing the perfect career that you’re going to love, but rather about finding a group of people you really enjoy working with. It’s about being willing to work your way through a handful of cycles of interviewing and accepting a new offer and quitting your mediocre job until you find a job with a group of people that you really enjoy spending time with.
Keep doing photography. Maybe get some framed and try to sell it. Get some other job to pay bills when you need to. If you are sinking cash into photography and it goes nowhere, just do it for fun. If you develop a following and it’s paying your bills, maybe someday you don’t need another job.
No find a career that you make money. Every career has its crappy days
I disagree with the poster who said doing what you love is complete BS. That is because I spent most my life not doing something I love just to earn money. And I’ve been nothing but absolutely miserable. So, I went back to school to do what I really love and now I’m happy. So many people never get a career they love and everyday they wake up, hating wanting to go to work. I was one of those people, you don’t want to be one of those people.
However, you have to be realistic if what you love to do has a very slim chance to become a career you can make money at. Unfortunately, this is the situation with photography. What I would do instead is pick something else you like to do that will land you a good job and money to support yourself, and do photography on the side as a hobby. You don’t have to like your 2nd choice as much as you like photography, you just have to like it enough to be okay with doing it as a job for the rest of your life while you do your photography on the side.
I like my job. I wouldn’t say I love it. I get paid well for it so I’m content.
Nope. In hindsight, I wish I’d gone for the simplest work (for me) and highest paying job.
My photographer cousin never wanted to work as a photographer because she didn’t want to resent the thing that she loved most.
No just find something you don’t mind doing so that you can have a good work life balance to dedicate time to the things and people you love. Don’t just do something for the money bc most of the time it drains your mental health and it’s not worth it. You have all your life to work but you only have so little time to do things that make you happy.