Monday Musings: On work, life, and finding your passion

I recently attended the inaugural edition of The Blogcademy, a workshop on how to be a professional blogger from Gala Darling, Kat Williams (Rock n Roll Bride), and Shauna Heider (Nubby Twiglet).  Now, while the dream is alive of someday having a job that is more task-focused rather than punching the 40-hour-per-week clock, I don’t know that I’ll ever manage to be a professional blogger.   I’m quite inspired to try, now, though!

Attending this workshop was amazing.  Here are three women who are living the dream – doing work that they are passionate about; that doesn’t feel arduous or painful or that they wake up in the morning dreading.   Sounds fabulous, right?

For some, professional blogging could be the next get-rich-quick scheme, rife with cheesy-ness and empty platitudes about “making it work.”  But the professionalism and work these three have put into their careers is truly impressive.  And it’s work.  They enjoy it, but they have put tons of thought into it and made really savvy business decisions, and they work every day to promote and improve and diversify their brands.   It’s not just, “oh, just make sure you get up every morning, and, you know, make sure you write something on your blog.  And add pictures*.”  It’s not that, not at all.   Each of our instructors could teach at any entrepreneurship school around.  They are businesswomen, through and through.  They just happen to have bright, sparkly jobs that they love, that use their business savvy in a fun, expressible way.

That’s one of the things I hope to get across in this blog, and through the interviews I do – that dream jobs exist, but that to truly enjoy your job, it has to challenge you.  It’s why I ask the question, “what’s the worst part of your job?”  The question should really be, “what is the part of your job that feels like work?”  Even dream jobs are hard work.  In fact, I would argue that in order to have a dream job you have to work hard.  Not just to land the job but every day.

Everyone I’ve interviewed about their dream job so far does say that it is hard work.  They say that there are compromises that they have to make – tradeoffs, like having a consistent, predictable paycheck, or free time, or finding that elusive work/life balance.  They work hard to get everything together, and the compromises that they make are ones that they are willing to make.  Sometimes, people work hard but enjoy it so much that they don’t recognize it as work (see Penelope Trunk‘s 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss).

So strive to find a job where you can enjoy the hard work.  Because, really, if everything was easy, how interesting could that possibly be?

If you are interested in finding out more about The Blogcademy, you can check out the recaps from others in my class:  Burnetts Boards; The Girl Who Knows; The Fete Blog; Little Bear in a Big World; Eldy’s Pocket; Condiments on a City Life; The Alchemy of Hustle; Andrea Jaggs;  Get your Green On;  Intertitles; Reverie Time;  City Girl Knows;  Me and My Ego;  Rubies and Ribbon

*(Okay, a relevant criticism of my blog is that I do, indeed, need to add some pictures.  Apologies.  I promise to get it together and start doing that.  I got some great tips on that front at the workshop, too.)