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Comment by gbog | Hacker News Reader

On this one

    34. Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.

It is true, but only half-true I guess. I have been bitten but this issue: With an engineering background, I loved music, and decided to try to live by music, so I became a sound engineer. I had to stop. After some time I could not listen to anything but raw classical (eg Bach). If you love music and want to continue loving it, don't make it your daily job!

I guess it is different with coding: If you like to code, maybe there is no problem in doing it also as a daily job (arguably).

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This is the closest to home for me.

I started coding when I was around 10. I wrote software every day for 12 years, enthralled and eager to try new things. I learned every language I could get my hands on. When it became a job, I lost all my passion for it. I quit coding for 10 years. Not a single line. I decided to become an automotive mechanic instead...

Today, I'm in IT and my creative outlet is board games. I not only play them, but I design them as well. Last year I licensed my first game and suddenly this dream that I have always had of being published was fulfilled. My first instinct was to embrace that success and use the boost to create more success. I had to pause. I was trying to force success again.

The difference this time was that I realized quickly that I was trying to monetize a hobby. Forget it. I'm not abandoning passionate game design for money. It's just not worth it.

I think the rub is that creative things (maybe almost everything, actually) really only grow out of intrinsic motivation. For most people, money is the exact opposite of that.

I completely agree with you. I also think that "most people" never truly understand and instead chase the almighty dollar believing it to be the measure of their success.

Money doesn't motivate me at all. It is a means of surviving without self-sustaining. I cut my pay in half to become an automotive mechanic and it was the greatest move I ever made. I was no longer working for the dollar, I was working for the joy of fixing things. Literally overnight I became poor and happy simultaneously.

That is really, really cool and inspiring. I think way more things can be fascinating and fulfilling than we think, its just a matter of thinking about them right. Shakespeare's "for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" rings truer every day to me.

Blaise Pascal: "We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others."

With a hobby, the simple act of doing it is the reward, and when money becomes the reward given to you by someone else, all of a sudden it becomes work. Hobbies are fun. Work is rewarding (and sometimes fun). But rarely do the two intersect. I think the point is if you can't find your hobby rewarding and/or you can't do it for 8+ hours a day, every day, then it shouldn't be your job.

With an engineering background, I loved music, and decided to try to live by music, so I became a sound engineer. I had to stop.

I can imagine. I designed my own book. Now every time I pick up a book I habitually look at the design before I read it. It is annoying as all get out. But at least I didn't become a font designer :-P

I got interested in photography some years ago while taking pictures for a web project. I guess I developed a degree of aptitude, and a friend asked me to photograph her wedding. She was totally kind and courteous about it, but I put so much pressure on myself to produce high-quality work that I decided I never wanted to do another wedding, and I probably didn't want to work for anyone as a photographer in any capacity.

It's just not the same delightful experience doing it for someone else as it is doing it for my own enjoyment.

This.

I shot a wedding for a couple in the church who could not afford a professional wedding photographer. One of the most stressful experiences of my life. I promised myself I would never shoot another wedding.

(Now, as a pastor, I can tell you that I found performing a wedding ceremony to be less stressful than photographing one. Go figure.)

Unrelated, but related: I do not like classic music at all, but I love J.S. Bach, whom I accidentally found by listening to Carl Bach. Or maybe I should say I love Concerto 3 keyboard played by Glenn Gould. I have no idea why, but I can listen to this over and over and over again while still hating most classic music. I dug into it, and found I kinda enjoy most work from the Baroque era although I couldn't really tell what is and what isn't unless I look up the author.

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