"the world in which doing what you love is a privilege is a world we have failed to design well."

the longer i live and the more i see, the stronger become my convictions about how the world should work. that said i wrestle, on a daily basis two specific ideas (i think it’s a coming of age thing). first is the idea of “doing what you love.” second is the idea of “making a living.” and then, the combo struggle is the intersection: should you be able to “make a living” “doing what you love?" 

this gets complicated for all sorts of reasons. in western (post-)industrial societies, we have an outdated definition of work, a major component of which is the 40 hour work week. industrialization divided work/labor into repeatable, assembly line-type tasks to maximize efficiency. however, we are evolving past that understanding of work. an increasing amount of people want meaning from their work. this typically means becoming more like craftspeople and less like cogs in machines.

unfortunately, our economic infrastructure doesn’t support our trajectory. so the plot is thickening. is it ok to do something you hate (because the world needs it to be done) in order to support yourself to do what you love on the side? or maybe complete integration of love and work is the goal? what does it even mean to “make” a living? shouldn’t we all just be able to live without having to “make” it? and if “make” really just means “earn,” isn’t it sort of fucked up that we have to “earn” the to live? 

i’m really unclear about this and i realize there probably isn’t a one-size fits all solution. two things i do believe strongly, though:

1. this problem we’re facing now between work, meaning, and living is a design problem. and it’s solvable.
2. society operates at a net loss when people are unable to find, develop, and bring their passion into the world. because competitive advantage.

i know i’m not the first to think about this but like… let’s get solving.