Never turn something you love into a job...

Okay, I have a lounge broadcast and for a long time I could listen at work and it was as much a personal broadcast as anything. But that changed and now I hardly have time for it and I can't stand the sound of it. I am beginning to hate lounge, though some stuff saves me.

And I have a website with various retro projects, and then I find that keeping up with them takes time and I am getting sick of that.

So I do this tiki event with Kiliki and work on these Exotica CDs and pretty soon I can't stand to listen to Exotica and I am ready to stay home because this damn event is ruling my life for 8 months at a time. Every lunch hour, every night, every weekend. I take vacations from work so I have time for this.

I am ruining all these things I love by diving in too them.

People always talk about making what you love your job and you'll be happy. Crap. You'll get good at it, get popular, get sick of it and then have to do it for the rest of your life!

I am ready for a 12 month vacation from all my "Interests" and "hobbies."

Anyway... Just a little venting.

I know just what you mean. I became an environmental lawyer because I loved the outdoors and was passionate to preserve the remaining wild places for future generations. I've since decided not to have kids and could care less whether the planet continues beyond when I give up the ghost or not. shrug Go figure.

Buck up, Swanky! We love everything you're doing for us Hukilau-wise, and besides whenever I work on some big ass PR project that seems too complicated to come off, I just think to myself "in so many days/hours the whole thing will be over and all this little stuff won't matter".
Just remember, the Mai-Kai is going to knock most of us on our collective rear-ends; especially if we suck up a rum barrel or two!

[ Edited by: Kailuageoff on 2003-06-19 20:08 ]

Swanky,

Your post makes sense however I cannot relate to it. I work in corporate finance. I yearn to do something that I love.

Everyday I pull in files from several different banks that report prior day cash activity for our Fitness chain with roughly 400 locations. We reconcile that activity against our general ledger and sort out shortages and overages on a daily basis.

After determining our cash position for the day I use that information to make decisions about how much money we will borrow or repay from our lenders. A 2 day notice gets us a lower rate from our lender but requires better forecasting accuracy.

I also negotiate rates from all of our financial vendors to make sure that we get the best possible price on credit card services, disbursement services, depository services etc..

Of the time I spend on the computer I am working mostly in Microsoft Excel or Crystal reports. In Excel I write macros to try and automate recurring functions and try and save time for other activities at work.

I am surrounded by uninspiring creativeless corporate folk who's idea of a hobby is watching tennis and sailing. They all love to play golf and own SUV's and expensive dogs. All of their vacations are to the bahamas or Hawaii.

I am totally generalizing but hopefully you get the idea. I picked a career because it seemed like a sensible thing to do. It pays ok and is very stable but it is literally suffocating for a creative person.

Watch what you wish for.

I would kill for a creative opportunity with pay.

Monkeyman

I hear ya Swanky. While I'm usually thrilled that I get to do the work I love, I'm totally sick of it right now. 10 or 12 70-hour work weeks in a row does not make me a happy camper. Then I think of that pithy saying, "No one on their deathbed ever says 'I wish I'd worked more'" and I want to slap them and say "how the hell am I supposed to pay the mortgage by working less?" while a kid half my age and salary is maneuvering for my job. And he can work 80 hour weeks no problem, cuz he has no life at all...but I digress. Just take a long break when you can. I was totally burned out back in 96 after a 5 year stint at Lucasarts and took half a year off to recover, and my love for the work slowly returned.
Best of luck to you, though!

My theory on this is "You got to do what it takes to survive". I got real tired of what I was doing before what I am doing now. Sometime in the future, I'll get real tired of what I'm doing now and move on to the next thing I'll get tired of. If you are tired with what you are doing now, then make a change. You can only eat lobster for so long. Top Ramen has many flavors to keep you satisfied untill you can eat lobster again. Being alive is way better than being dead!
(U-Roy will make you's feel better. U-Roy makes everything better.) Yaaaaaaaaayyhhh!

Swanky, I LOVE your broadcast. I would be so bummed if you took it away. It makes my work day so much jollier!

sounds like you need a vacation - you get one of those with even the best jobs in the world!

Ben, that reply was the greatest. Amen!

Now if only what I do, which I am not totally sick of yet by any means, would start making money again. That would be, well, it'd be ZAZZ!!

Okay, world, stock market's up, can we please get back to having FUN? Cripes!!!

recession-crabby tikivixen

Swanky is verrrrry clever!

Monkeyman- I hear ya. I really, really, hear ya. It's because you and I are in the same situation that I got off my butt and started doing more things I enjoyed after work, like local theatre, tiki stuff, graphic design projects, etc. Now, I'm in the Swanky boat- not so much that I'm sick of my outside interests, it's just that I'm exhausted all the time. I don't know what the solution is. If doing what you love makes you hate it ultimately, and doing what you hate only makes it harder to do what you love, then where do you go from there? Sometimes I'd love to just have a job from 9 to 5 that didn't require any thought, and I could just push it to the back of my mind to make room for all the other things that make me happy. Lot's of people I know can do that- say "It's just a job" and get on with living. But I can't. I wish I could. If it's too mundane, then I get bored and frustrated, and can't handle spending that much of my waking life doing crap.

Ugh. The tedious tales of ennui from the liberal arts major. Old story.

Lord, we're all old!

I got to thinking more about it and there is a difference in doing what you love and having to do what you love. That's where I am getting sick of it.

Not that I have to do any of this. It's a tough choice though. My problem is really Hukilau. Even though for the most part, things are going well this year, it has still absorbed normal life. Not to mention several hundred dollars and all our vacation time.

We'll access after the event, but my vote is to stop doing it. We have so much support for next year already, but man. I want my life back.

I used to go to the gym 3-4 days a week and I realized that was sucking up all my time. I quit that. Gained 40 pounds and cholesterol at 247 and sugar at 500...

Anyway. Enough bitching. It's tiredness mostly. Yes, a vacation will be good. We can't wait to go to Chicago in August and be the guest instead of the host and just have fun. Can't wait to get to Mexico in November. Can't wait to have nothing required for the evening but putting up bamboo in Shangri-La and mixing all the drinks in Intoxica poolside... It seems too far away though.

Forgive my damn bitching. Vacation. That's the ticket. I work to pay the bills and drive my nice car and live in my nice home, and to get a good vacation. If I didn't work, vacation would be pointless!

Oh, and before you get to thinking it, I didn't start this thread for people to heap praise on me. I appreciate the listeners and the folks coming to the site and to the event and everything. I'm just telling my feelings, and obviously folks can relate. And your advice has been good.

Ben's reply was very Zen! And I agree. Although we can't control everything that happens to us, we can control our reaction to it and what we decide to do with the situation is mostly up to us.

Hey Vin!
Call me Zen Ben! I only wish I was Zen! It's a dream/fantasy to live in total Zen! Like, how cool would be to live with nothing!? Life would be so easy. To live in a place where you had to make your own shelter, get your own food, etc. would be an ideal life! But, we were raised here so we gots to do whats we gots to do. But again, that dream/fantasy keeps us going.

On 2003-06-20 16:47, Swanky wrote:
Oh, and before you get to thinking it, I didn't start this thread for people to heap praise on me. I appreciate the listeners and the folks coming to the site and to the event and everything. I'm just telling my feelings, and obviously folks can relate. And your advice has been good.

Swanky, thak you very much for creating this topic. I feel like I got a few more years in me now. Thanks again!

Just to put a little different slant on this, remember that you sometimes have to do things you don't like to have things you do like. Such as, you might not like getting up everyday and going to work however getting your paycheck then in turn buys you things you do like! Such as tiki mugs, vacations, Mondo Tiki, etc. That, for me, puts everything into perspective.

I hear ya on that man, I got MARRIED.

Kidding.

A more western take on this is to practice moderation in all things. That includes work and hobbies.
I watched in horror as my parents became consumed by showing and breeding purebreed dogs when I was in my late teens, and saw all of the nasty rivalries that cropped up, the petty jealousies that created hard feelings among various people they knew, and even saw foolish financial decisions of people that got too consumed with their show dog hobby to the point of ending marriages.
I'm sure some of it was because these people - and even my parents at times -- were unhappy with some other aspect of their lives -- and they thought their hobby could change some or all of that. The natural desire many of us have to be the best and do it all can also unintentionally ruin us or harm others if we take it too far.
That's not to say we shouldn't pursue our passions, but we have to always be careful not to let our passions run away with us. And, it also means that if some other part of life isn't working for you -- your job, your kids, your spouse, where you live -- take time away from your hobbies and try to fix that. Your hobby -- whether it is tiki, or whatever else -- will be more pleasurable for yourself and others, if you are basically at peace with the rest of your life, or at least as close to peace as you can reasonably get.
Maybe what I'm saying here is obvious to everyone, but as I still have to remind myself sometimes to ease up on the tiki thing, I thought it worth mentioning.

Cheers!