[mettamage]

> Choose life, not career. Find something you love doing and do it for the 'work' itself, not for some postponed happiness.

Insightful story about the investment banker. Your policy about choosing life feels like good advice in light of that story. The implementation details, that’s where it always gets difficult.

My story:

I want to make music. I think of music all the time. Whenever I made music I was passionate about it.

However:

- my music training is limited

- people that I know who are amazing alternate from being homeless to renting out a place. They are poor.

Do I have that much passion that I want to risk 10 to 20 years of my life in poor wealth and perhaps poor family life?

No. I want to live a middle class life while making music.

Sounds realistic?

Just follow your passion people, the invisible hand will help you.

Obviously I am cynical about this, I sincerely hope you can prove me wrong, for I would love to make music.

[sopooneo]

To build on what you said: in my twenties I fell in briefly with a group of pretty elite level, classically trained, working musicians. Though I am not a music person at all myself. I would go to their (very fun) parties and just got to know them and their scene a bit. Do you know what they talked about more than anything else? More than theory or favorite artists or their instruments?

Money.

They had to be obsessed with it, about where to get it, what gigs were paying how much, about when to sell out for it. Because none of them had any, but they all still needed to pay the rent.

Amazing people, astonishing talent, wild life. Constant worry.

[magduf]

Yep, that's the whole problem with this "follow your passion" BS. I'm the opposite: I work in a tech job on something I really don't care much about, but the pay is excellent, and the stability is actually pretty good too. I work 8h a day, I have an easy commute, I don't stress about money. I have a pretty easy life that way. But it also feels pretty empty in some ways, but the way I see it I've removed what for me was a big stressor in my earlier life. Maybe later, after I've saved up a lot, I can think about doing something that brings me more fulfillment, but for now I just concentrate on enjoying my free time, and look at work as just that: work.

I also look at the janitors in my building when I leave work in the evening, and remind myself that they're not following their passion either. Most workers do not get to do anything that really excites them. So I count myself lucky that I can do something that doesn't ruin my health or make me hate life, and I can get paid well for it, so instead of worrying how to pay rent, I can worry about less urgent things like what to spend my weekend doing. Plus, with my free time (since I don't have a job that's overworking me, like some people), I'm free to pursue my other passions there.

[ddelt]

You have a great outlook on things in my opinion. Cheers!

[vict00ms]

>I want to live a middle class life while making music. Sounds realistic?

Not even remotely. These days the arts are for trust fund kids or risk-takers, not those aspiring to be middle class.

[nickthemagicman]

Following your dreams is a multi-generational undertaking.

Only rich kids get to follow any dream they want.

If you're not rich already your job is to get rich so your kids can follow their dreams.

[elbear]

Look for the middle ground. I realized that I want to work on things I like, but I still need to eat, so I've decided to split my time. I want to work at least an hour to something I'm passionate about. That way, even if I spend more of my time working for someone else, I know I still spend some of my time doing something I love.

So follow your passion, but also your survival instinct.

[mettamage]

> So follow your passion, but also your survival instinct.

As far as simple quotes go. This sounds optimistic, yet reasonable.

Based on your advice, maybe I should just go to Thailand and freelance as an app/web dev for 3 days per week and play guitar / make electronic music for the rest. I'd wonder how I'd prepare for economic down turns though.

I'd make about: 5000 euro's per month (@ 50 euro's per hour as a freelancer). Living on about 10000 euro's per year, I'd save 20000 euro's after taxes (Dutch, high taxes, yay!). Regardless of that, I guess I wouldn't need to worry about recessions after 2 years of part-time remote freelance work, not in South East Asia anyway.

Sounds doable, at first glance. I need more glances. Especially the, "what about my girlfriend, friends and family?" glance.

[edraferi]

Worry about a wife and kids when you WANT to worry about it. Living the life you want is the best way to meet a partner who supports that lifestyle.

Maybe one day you’ll decide it’s time for kids, and both you and your partner decide to head back to the EU for that. Or maybe you’ll raise kids in Thailand. Or maybe your partner will get an amazing opportunity somewhere else entirely and you can be a stay at home parent, making beats while the kids are at school.

It’s your life. Live it the way you want. Don’t worry too much.

[elbear]

If you're making 50 euros per hour, couldn't stay in the Netherlands, so that you get to be with your girlfriend, friends and family and still work 3 days per week? I think 5000 euros per month should be enough even for the Netherlands. It's true that you would save less, but you would get to be with your friends and family.

Or you could just go to Thailand for a few months, so you also scratch the traveling bug. There's nothing stopping you from coming back when you start missing the people close to you. You have options.

[Retra]

Then get cancer and die young.

[mettamage]

Hey Retra, I looked at your comment history, to see why you'd possibly be saying this.

I've noticed two type of comments that you made:

1. Comments that have substantial reasoning, mostly technical but not always. These seemed to be appreciated.

2. Short comments that seemed to attack the person or a particular concept. These short comments did not have any reasoning from your side. Also, most of these comments are non-technical.

My first thought was: it seems that you have a lot of technical knowledge, and people appreciate this. I know I do.

Two observations on the category 2 comments you make:

1. In the comments that I skimmed, no one seemed to tell you to read the guidelines. I'll post the link [1]. Saying "then get cancer and die young" is an offensive thing to say because you're attacking the person. For some people this is obvious, but based on your comment history, I doubt whether this is obvious to you. Attacking a person is not a civil thing to do, not a nice thing to do (unless it's meant in a constructive fashion, even then it'd be debatably constructive). Regardless of that, it is in violation of the guidelines. As a technical person, I hope you'd appreciate that I'm pointing to a source appointed by Y Combinator. They make the rules on how to behave here, so then behave like that, the guidelines are reasonable. You seem to do so in most of your comments.

2. In most cases, short comments don't work quite well on Hacker News (many counter examples exist, I'm describing a trend which I observe). This is not because HN'ers dislike discussion, they dislike a discussion that does not have scientific evidence (again, a trend), most already have a problem when someone says "based on my experience". Do with this observation what you will, it's just my observation which is biased as well.

I hope these two points will help you to improve your comments like these ones, because it is obvious that you have a lot of insightful things to offer. And HN would be a more fun place if we'd see more of that and less of "then get cancer and die young" type of comments.

If you want a private conversation about this, you can always email me (check my profile).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html -- read the section "In Comments"

[Retra]

I understand that what I said was possibly ambiguous, but I was not actually suggesting to someone that they should get cancer. I was 'bookending' a story that they were implicitly telling, in an attempt to point out that "going for your dreams" can easily run off the rails due to circumstances out of your control, and that a reasonable person might rather spend their efforts building a safety net for themselves, so that they will be able to go after there dreams without worrying so much about such matters.

Unfortunately, the more effort I seem to put into a post, the less effort others tend to put into reading it, so we all walk a fine line between precision and conciseness, and sometimes we end up on the wrong side. I don't take it personally.

[mettamage]

Haha, that isn’t how I saw it.

That’s a sad bookending :(

[elbear]

There's always a possibility of that happening, but you shouldn't let it at the forefront of your mind. Unless if it makes you appreciate every day more.