On not following my passion

Mike Rowe’s response to why he thought people should not follow his/her passion is getting a buzz. To simply summarize it, he argues that one should not follow one’s passion for too long because many if not most cannot reach there anyway; and he believes those people should see it earlier rather than later to make their lives happier.

I am not rich. I am not even close to be rich at all. I am not what I thought I would want to be when I was younger. I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to make my living by telling others stories from the rest of the world in “a journalistic way”. But I wasn’t able to even start my carrier as a journalist. I was employed by a systems integrator after I failed all of my applications to most of the newspaper publishers in Japan when I graduated school.

But I can safely say I am very fortunate to be where I am. Not because now those newspaper companies are struggling; but because I found what I would love during my tenure since then. It turned out I loved writing software to solve someone else’s problem.

The first batch of “programs” I wrote - or more like I typed - was games printed on magazines. Basic Magazine and later I/O. I had fun with it with my brother sitting next to me. I took basic computer programming classes of Natural Science division when I finished getting most of grade points to graduate college with my major. But it never got me until I was assigned to the R&D department at the second year at my first company when I found that I loved, and was very good at, learning something new about computer software and telling people about my learning by writing and speaking. That was when my carrier really has started.

I could have followed my heart and have tried harder to be a journalist, by for example spend a whole year abroad and apply for the next year’s new hire opportunity. I was too scared of doing that. Instead I grabbed a job that wasn’t what I thought I would be - a programmer. Since then, like someone that Mike Rowe shared in his response, “I found a way to love it”. With a little bit of luck of department assignment.

I am in no way eligible to telling someone else something to do or something not to do; I am nobody anyway. But I can say to myself now that I am doing what I wanted to do, by “telling people what I learned about the world”; That world may be smaller, or virtual world of computer programs. Bonus is that I am paid to do it and colleagues around me (I believe) thinks I am doing it good.