Jeai-cArlos Cl. Tee

You have your job, maybe a sideline or two and of course, what you love doing, your passion. Chatting with Marcelo got me thinking about those three.

Well, I assume you all know what those three are. For me, I guess this set up is ideal for me:

You definitely need a job, unless you get all your money from stocks! But for the rest of us work-hard-trying-to-make-a-living kinda guys, you gotta have one. It has to pay well to cover your and your dependent’s basic needs. And, you should be at least in good terms with most of the people you work with, but, how to build good rapport is whole other topic. Most of all, you gotta enjoy it - love it.

Sidelines? Well… it differs with every person. Personally I don’t want one. The thing is, for a bachelor like me, if I’m not getting enough compensation from my day job, well, to hell with it - I quit! On the other hand, if you got kids or you’re saving up for something really expensive (I imagine an open-line iPhone) and you’re a little short of money, go for one, or two, depending on how much you can handle. But what type of sideline? All depends on what is available and what it is you wanna do, something that interests you. I’d imagine mine to be photography or writing (blogging). Ideally, I don’t want it be same with my day job. Can’t be stuck doing the same thing all the damn time!

So we’re done with jobs and sidelines - what about your passion - the thing you really, really wanna do? Lucky are the guys who have their passion as their day job. My passions are windows programming, systems development, database design…but I work as a web developer. Bummer. Well, I know, they are not too far apart but the difference is wide enough to make me reconsider my employment. So what to do when you don’t have your passion as a job? Do it as a hobby or if you wanna make money out of it, a sideline! In my case, I can write open-source programs for projects at SourceFourge.net. Or, I can write my own stuff at home just for the fun and experience of it. Something like that. It all depends on the situation and what I feel like doing.

Bottom line? We all need to make choices so we can enjoy and make worth out of our limited time here on Earth. I’m still figuring out what best works for me and I’ll take this post as an advise to myself. Whatever that choice maybe, be sure you’d be happy with it.