‘Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’.
It’s a nice sentiment, but sadly the moment you depend on it for survival, it becomes work.
In another comment just now, I mentioned my hobbies include making knives/swords, leather work, and some light carpentry.
I love all these things. I make a pretty neat and simple metal rose that I can do different things with for coloring, and those sell like hotcakes around valentines day. But every year, I only make a handful for a few people here and there, and almost always as gifts. I never make a bunch of them beforehand with intent to sell “to someone”, that’s work. That’s unenjoyable for me.
I could make bank in my area if I invested my savings into metalworkingnstuff stuff and focused on custom knives for hunting and camping, but the thought of that makes me want to kick my anvil and forge into the lake.
I suppose the response to that should be “well I just haven’t found the thing I truly love” yet, but I just don’t believe there is anything of value that I could provide to anyone that I would enjoy so much that it never feels like work and pays all my bills.
Right, but you’re still assuming a capitalist society. Without that cutthroat marketplace and the need to compete, it wouldn’t necessarily be like that.
It’s really hard to imagine, I know – and especially because I get it, I have a very niche hobby (period corset making and couture tailoring) that I could potentially make a lot of money doing but when I tried, it sucked all the enjoyment out of it to the point I had to stop for a few years.
I’m talking about doing what you’re good at without the backdrop of a capitalist system that sucks you for every drop of blood you have.
‘Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’.
I’ll bet there are things you love to do that would have value to others in society, even if you wouldn’t consider that a ‘job’ or ‘work’.
That’s kind of my point. If our society weren’t so broken, you could contribute without having to do what we currently consider ‘work’.
e : this sounded wrong, sorry. I meant if we could let go of capitalism, this is how things should work. We can’t have nice things, though.
It’s a nice sentiment, but sadly the moment you depend on it for survival, it becomes work.
In another comment just now, I mentioned my hobbies include making knives/swords, leather work, and some light carpentry.
I love all these things. I make a pretty neat and simple metal rose that I can do different things with for coloring, and those sell like hotcakes around valentines day. But every year, I only make a handful for a few people here and there, and almost always as gifts. I never make a bunch of them beforehand with intent to sell “to someone”, that’s work. That’s unenjoyable for me.
I could make bank in my area if I invested my savings into metalworkingnstuff stuff and focused on custom knives for hunting and camping, but the thought of that makes me want to kick my anvil and forge into the lake.
I suppose the response to that should be “well I just haven’t found the thing I truly love” yet, but I just don’t believe there is anything of value that I could provide to anyone that I would enjoy so much that it never feels like work and pays all my bills.
I long for the utopian future of post-scarcity…
Right, but you’re still assuming a capitalist society. Without that cutthroat marketplace and the need to compete, it wouldn’t necessarily be like that.
It’s really hard to imagine, I know – and especially because I get it, I have a very niche hobby (period corset making and couture tailoring) that I could potentially make a lot of money doing but when I tried, it sucked all the enjoyment out of it to the point I had to stop for a few years.
I’m talking about doing what you’re good at without the backdrop of a capitalist system that sucks you for every drop of blood you have.