I have always been a big proponent of following your heart and doing exactly what you want to do. It sounds so simple, right? But there are people who spend yearsdecades, eventrying to find a true sense of purpose for themselves. My advice? Just find the thing you enjoy doing more than anything else, your one true passion, and do it for the rest of your life on nights and weekends when youre exhausted and cranky and just want to go to bed.</p>
<p>It could be anythingmusic, writing, drawing, acting, teachingit really doesnt matter. All that matters is that once you know what you want to do, you dive in a full 10 percent and spend the other 90 torturing yourself because you know damn well that its far too late to make a drastic career change, and that youre stuck on this mind-numbing path for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Is there any other way to live?</p>
<p>I cant stress this enough: Do what you love
in between work commitments, and family commitments, and commitments that tend to pop up and take immediate precedence over doing the thing you love. Because the bottom line is that life is short, and you owe it to yourself to spend the majority of it giving yourself wholly and completely to something you absolutely hate, and 20 minutes here and there doing what you feel you were put on this earth to do.</p>
<p>Before you get started, though, you need to find the one interest or activity that truly fulfills you in ways nothing else can. Then, really immerse yourself in it for a few fleeting moments after an exhausting 10-hour day at a desk job and an excruciating 65-minute commute home. During nights when all you really want to do is lie down and shut your eyes for a few precious hours before you have to drag yourself out of bed for work the next morning, or on weekends when your friends want to hang out and youre dying to just lie on your couch and watch TV because youre too fatigued to even think straightthese are the times when you need to do what you enjoy most in life.</p>
<p>Because when you get right down to it, everyone has dreams, and you deserve the chancehell, you owe it to yourselfto pursue those dreams when you only have enough energy to change out of your work clothes and make yourself a half-assed dinner before passing out.</p>
<p>Say, for example, that your passion is painting. Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and buy a canvas and some painting supplies! Go sign up for art classes! And when you get so overwhelmed with your job and your personal life that you barely have enough time to see your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife, let alone do anything else, go ahead and skip classes for a few weeks. Then let those paint brushes sit in your room untouched for six months because a major work project came up and you had a bunch of weddings to go to and your kid got sick and money is tighter than you thought it would be and you have to work overtime. And then finally pick those brushes back up again only to realize youre so rusty that you begin to question whether this was all a giant waste of time, whether you even want to paint anymore, and whether this was just some sort of immature little fantasy you had as a kid and that maybe its finally time to grow the **** up, let painting go, and join the real world because, lets face it, not everyone gets to live out their dreams.</p>
<p>Not only does that sound fulfilling, but it also sounds pretty fun.</p>
<p>Really, the biggest obstacle to overcome hereaside from every single obligation you have to your friends, family, job, and financial futureis you. And Ill tell you this much: You dont want to wake up in 10 years and think to yourself, What if I had just gone after my dreams during those brief 30-minute lunch breaks when I was younger? Because even if it doesnt work out, dont you owe it to yourself to look in the mirror and confidently say, You know what, I gave it my best half-hearted shot?