You likely grew up hearing the phrases, “Follow your dreams,” and, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Your first instinct might be to go bounding with unbridled enthusiasm towards an adulthood in which all hours of your day are spent living, breathing, and doing the thing you love the most. But, hold your horses for a moment. What if your dream won’t allow you to be financially stable as an adult?
To illustrate this with an example, let’s say you are great at theater. The applause after “breaking a leg” and nailing a performance provides a rush of dopamine, and the recognition of friends and family cheering you on feels fantastic.
You’re also competent in, and enjoy, writing code, but your true passion is in the arts. That’s your dream, to be a Broadway star. So doesn’t following your dream mean committing wholeheartedly to theater, majoring in this area in college, and making ends meet until you can make it big? Well, not exactly. What these motivational statements have left out is the addendum that your dream doesn’t need to be your day job.
How to Know If Your Dream Can Be Your Day Job
There are resources online that can help you determine whether there is demand for your desired career path. The intersection of the results for “most in-demand careers” and “jobs with the highest salaries” can serve as a good starting point.
To continue with the example from earlier, knowing that you enjoy math and science, the career of software developer could be a perfect match, as this field is continuing to grow and comes with a reliable salary.
Getting Comfortable with Contentment
With choosing a career that isn’t your deepest passion, you may be concerned about what it means to feel content, but not over-the-moon in love, with work. This is only normal, as a number of factors are making gauging a normal level of life satisfaction more difficult. Social media shows only the highlight reel, and we assume everyone else must be bursting with joy all the time. It’s important to remember that’s simply not true. If mood is a scale from zero to ten, with ten being completely happy, making the goal a seven is one helpful step to revise expectations.
How to Pursue Your Passion on Your Off Hours
In school and college, it is relatively easy to find creative outlets for your passions. There are a multitude of clubs to join and also proximity to people with similar interests. As an adult, if you live in a big city, a search for “[insert passion here] classes/clubs/events near me” will turn up a plethora of results. For those in more rural areas, one thing that the COVID-19-caused shutdown has shown is that community can be found virtually, through events conducted over Zoom.
There are great stories of comedians and actors who majored in a stable field, got a day job they enjoyed, and then spent most of their free time honing their craft, doing shows in the evening. Over time, they improved and, for some, were making enough from their side hustle to invest fully in that path. For those who didn’t, they nevertheless found a way to follow their dreams.