[maxxxxx]

All my passions are either commercially not useful or things I am not talented enough to be in front. Example: martial arts and boxing. I really loved it but I am naturally very nonathletic so I was never be able to hang with the top people which is frustrating considering the effort I put into it. Same with hiking and photography. I like doing it but somehow I lack the artistic ability to stand out.

I have passion for software development. I am good at it but somehow I never managed to do it in an environment that doesn't kill my passion for it. I have done my own thing but failed at the business side like selling.

I really wish I had passion for something I am good at and that also allows me to do it for a living instead of feeling like I am wasting my life sitting in a cubicle. People who have managed to make their passion into a career should be envied.

[triviatise]

The standards you are using are not good. You dont have to become the best to enjoy the doing of things. Life is about the journey, not the destination.

My dad used to always tell me if you cant be the best dont even bother. Even though it was his primary sport, since we are asian, he wouldnt teach me to play basketball because I couldnt be the best. I 100% disagree with his philosophy.

In life Ive never been the best at anything, it takes too much work. However I have been pretty good at a lot of things and enjoy the learning and the doing. I have had a lot of hobbies and I guess my passion is learning new hobbies.

When your happiness depends on other's judgement of you, you will never be able to consistently be happy.

I have run my own company for 18 years, this year we will just hit 8 million in revenue. Yet, many of my friends have built and sold companies for 10+ million in just a handful of years. Im clearly not the best, but who cares? I have freedom to do other things I love and enjoy my work even though I would rather be building computer games.

At my company we try to help discover what the company can do to help people live the life they love. It is surprisingly harder than you might think for people to listen to their own voice because it is drowned out by all the voices around them telling them what they should love and what they should do.

[Nostradedamus]

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

[asr1191]

Einstein is not just another person, right? The man had amazing perseverance. Not everyone is like that.

But I am genuinely curious to know how lesser known, and the more average kind of person deals with this. Because I feel like I might end up being in the same situation judging from my current progress.

[Nostradedamus]

Look, I "bootstrapped my brain" all my life…maybe because I was lazy or impatient and wanted quick solutions.

On HN, I see lots of amazing individuals with great education, work experiences using "expensive" vocabulary.

I am not one of them. I was below average in school but "bootstrapped" my professional life using my personality and my imagination. I ended up creating something beyond my wildest dream.

[maxxxxx]

I am not sure what to learn from this.

[Nostradedamus]

You're not wasting your life sitting in a cubicle. Your mind is always free to create and discover...

[tmaly]

Sometimes a low stress job is ideal for the opportunity to create.

[Nostradedamus]

But high stress can do some amazing things to your brain. And immediately when I found this out I use it at my advantage. For years I worked on my project with results like "a step forward, two steps behind". So I quit my job with only a few thousands $$ and put as much stress on my "system". I found my "eureka moment" a few days before I ran out of $$. They call this the survival instinct.

[maxxxxx]

I think it's great that you succeeded but you shouldn't generalize your experience. I also put everything on the line for a business idea and failed miserably with a lot of debt. There are a lot of factors involved in success. It's not only persistence.

[is_true]

Stress usually comes with health issues. Be careful

[swframe2]

You may need two jobs for a brief amount of time. One that pays the bills. Another that drives your passion. Think of your first job as "bootstrapping" your second job. Just make sure the first job doesn't take so much effort that you have no energy left to do what you really want to do.

[maxxxxx]

My point was that finding your passion may not result in a viable career. I have tried to bootstrap the second job but it has always failed. My guess is that this is the case for most people and only a lucky few manage to turn their passion into a career.

If Einstein hadn't been Einstein he may have failed in physics work and stayed a bored patent clerk forever. I bet this happened and is still happening to a lot of people.

[inertiatic]

This hits home, but most of the time I think this is an excuse we tell ourselves when we didn't try hard enough.

[kennxfl]

I agree. It's the spot in a Venn diagram that separates happy people from those who are just surviving.