Doing What You Love

Recently I have been reading many different Blogs. Some about being successful in life, some about being successful in business and a few about being happy; almost all of them have the same basic message: Do What You Love.

For the longest time I have been jealous of Harper and all of his success in the world of computers. I now understand what he was able to do what he has done and why he was able to do it. He loves computers. He has been playing around with computers forever and has finally found people crazy enough to pay him bundles of money to do just that.
Since I realized this I have putting a lot of thought into what I love doing and how I can do that to make money. Here are the things I love:

• -Clowning
• -Crafting
• -Diving
• -Video Games
• -Comics
• -Writing

The above list is probably not complete or is it in any order except the order that I thought of them. I am going to go through, look at each one, and see which one strikes me as the one I like best.

**Clowning- **Clowning is something that I have been doing for over ten years and I love doing it. My favorite type of clowning is doing volunteer clown jobs. I do four or five of them a year and I am always a big hit. The problem with doing jobs volunteer style is that the pay sucks. I have thought in the past about trying to charge the non-profits that I work with to do these jobs, but since I have done it free for almost ten years that hardly seems fair or nice.

The one part of clowning that I do not enjoy is the booking process. I have yet to find a way of booking that works well for me. I have tried numerous methods and just kind find the magic bullet booking plan. I am also not a fan of waiting for the phone to ring and having to sell myself to customers. I think that this problem stems from the fact that I hate the competitive aspect of entertaining. I want to be friends and cooperate with my fellow entertainers and not all entertainers are interested in having that type of relationship.

Crafting- I started sewing when my mom and I made me some shorts when I was about twelve. Actually, it may have been earlier, I do not really remember. I love sewing, especially making my Awesome Guys, and enjoy the since of accomplishment that comes from finishing a hard project.

Once again I do not really enjoy the selling part of crafting. So far, I have done most of my selling via Etsy, which allows me avoid the hard sell on people I can actually see. I do not enjoy that the most common way to sell your items on Etsy is to spam the forums with your items to get bundles of people to look at your items. There has to be a better way but I have not found it yet.

The best part of crafting is that it provides a creative outlet and gives you a very tangible product. I do wish that the Awesome Guys sold a little better, but their lack of sales doesn’t diminish how much fun I had making them.

Diving- When I learned to SCUBA dive all I wanted to do was dive. I was interested in becoming a Master Diver and possibly working as a diver somewhere. This went along with my dream of becoming a Marine Biologist. Unfortunately, I was not very dedicated to the science side of marine biology and so my kept learning more and more about the diving side of things.

What I love about SCUBA is that it combines the relaxation of being suspended in space with the adventure of exploring the unknown. I wish that I had more time and money to spend on SCUBA so that I could dive more often. Luckily, I own all my own equipment, which means that when someone wants to dive I am ready to go at a moments notice. In addition, not having to rent anything really keeps the prices down on dive trips.

The only problem is that SCUBA is a buddy sport. You have to have a buddy to do it safely and I unfortunately have written too often on the dangers of SCUBA and scared Sarah away from it. Recently I have been fortunate enough to find a person who is interested in doing some diving and may have a dive buddy in the near future. We shall see.

The real bummer about SCUBA is that I spent a year diving for school/jobs and that took some of the shiny veneer off the sport. It was no longer an amazing thing that I got to do; it was something I had to do. I still loved it but it no longer felt special. It has, however, been a number of years since I “had” to dive and I am hoping that diving this summer will give me an opportunity to fall in love with recreational diving again.

Video Games- Who doesn’t love video games? I am sure there is someone out there who does not like them, but they are crazy. I love playing video games. I have always had a secret interest in making a video game but I am not interested in taking the time to learn how to do it.

This feeling most likely comes from when I tried to teach myself php. I was able to learn very little and ended up frustrated and annoyed with the whole idea. I could probably learn easier if I where to take a class but since I am not necessarily interested spending my life behind a computer screen I do not feel it is important to learn programming languages.

Comics- I have recently started reading comic books again. This combined with my love of web-comics means that I spend a lot of time each week reading comics. Currently I am reading Hack/Slash, Grimm’s Fairytales, Ultimate Spiderman and Army of Darkness in the real world. The funny thing about the comic books that I read is that they are almost all horror comics, which is weird since I hate horror movies. Online I realPenny Arcade, XKCD, PvP, Looking for Group and Ctrl-Alt-Del. Unlike the comic books, almost all of my web comics are about the gaming culture.

If I were better at drawing, I would probably try to start a web comic, mostly because I have enjoyed reading other peoples so much and feel that I have a lot of fun stuff crammed into my head

Writing- When I decided that I wanted to write a children’s book a floodgate has opened. Between this blog, my other blog and my notebooks I am probably writing for an hour or two a day. All I need to do is figure out how to be paid to do all of that writing. I find writing to be relaxing and an amazing way to clear my mind. I find that on the days I do the most writing I sleep so much better.

One other benefit of writing everyday is that it seems to work as a jump drive for my brain. I am able to store information somewhere else letting me cram more information into my brain. I assume that this is helping me do better in school.

I was hoping that by writing all of this stuff about my hobbies that I would be able to pick one that I liked most over the rest. Unfortunately, what has happened is that I have realized how much I enjoy all of these things. Apparently, I will need to do more thinking about which one I like best. Or I could just pick one.