Comment by Shared404 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shared404 | Hacker News Reader

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Well said. On mobile at the moment, but will edit on my pc later to fix formatting if I remember.

I'll be up front - I do disagree with your take, at least partially. I quite like the screwdriver analogy used elsewhere in the comments.

I love working with computers. I have for years.

Recently, I turned that into a job. I enjoy my job, though I wouldn't say I love it. However, it does allow me 5o practice and learn, so that I can improve my skills when I do perform a labor-of-love project.

If I were to make a labor of love project, and then someone were to pay me to support it, why would that project atop being a labor of love? There would be extra workload that would not (billing, other business cruft, etc), but I think the core of it would be.

Similarly for art/music - if I producea song because I like writing music, and people are willing to pay for a high quality download, would it stop being a labor of love at that point?

Curious to hear your thoughts on these edge cases.

Feel free to disagree again: I think you’re either being unclear with your definition of enjoyment and love, or you are perhaps confused between the two.

Which isn’t to say you aren’t having positive feelings at your job, I think that’s possible and in general ideal.

Enjoyment out of spending more time the way you want to as opposed to the way others have dictated it be spent is very natural, I believe. But I have to draw the distinction between love and enjoyment. Love (to me) is the expression of an idea from the soul, and the willingness to nurture this idea from the perspective of nature and harmony. There is a harmony in creating order (code, poetry, music), and there is a harmony in creating a roughness around which order and harmony form. (Clouds, fractals, abstract ideas, natural patterns) to experience this as the self with the world and with others in the world is how I believe love exists and comes to be.

When you’re paid for this process it diminishes love with the element of time, and space. You have to do it by so and so time, or there will be a material consequence. (Even if the time is very far away)

I don’t think that your labor of love becomes undone, but it’s something else. It’s enjoying the fruits of your labor, and that is not the same as laboring for love. Not to me at least.

I even would say you can enjoy making things others love. But for you yourself, it’s not possible.

And for me, in practical experience, I don’t get many who love what I do, and I don’t really enjoy the climate around me full of people doing nothing but stacking up money for no purpose.

I suppose my real gripe here is that I wish things were good or meaningful.

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