Hating What You Love

[aadroma]

So I was watching Top Chef Just Desserts last night, and a woman left of her own volition, and she described how her love was cooking, but under the circumstances of the competition, she was starting to hate what she loved. As she explained her stance and packed up to leave, I realised how much I could empathise with her

Comments

[ciddyguy]

I have been thinking on this a little since I first saw this last night and that is that if you love cooking but find restaurant work just kills it, it's not the cooking part that's the problem, it's dealing with all the other people, the egos and such and if you don't own your own place and can have creative control over what you do then what's the point?

That being said, doing what you love for a living and then continue it on the side as a creative outlet can be a beneficial thing as when you do it for a living, it may NOT always be stylistically creative, can be mundane but can teach you skills you may not acquire otherwise and that CAN help you with your personal work by allowing you to learn new skills and grow.

But in the end, it's more often the environment you are working in that can kill any passion you may have but also, if you are good at what you do, the chance to succeed is greater than if you find out you aren't all that good at something then perhaps another segment of the similar line of work may be more to your liking.

For instance I love architecture but realized long ago that I don't do numbers well so that leaves that out, but I CAN still work with it, but more as a historian or something like that or simply work with an organization that perhaps photographs older buildings for historical record might be more my cup of tea, I enjoy interior design but realized, again, that the loads and stress one finds one in as a designer was not where it was at either, but I CAN sit back and see what COULD be done in a room to make it work better.

I guess what I'm saying is look at the whole picture, see where your strengths are in a particular area and see where you might be best suited within that field and see if that helps you with doing what you love.