
What Does It Mean To Love What You Do? - dshipper
http://danshipper.com/love-is-right-in-front-of-you
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j45
Love is a verb, not a noun.

Love isn't desire for possession of something.

Love is action, not bottled and shown around.

Painters shows love for painting, by painting.

Writers show love for writing by writing.

Designers show love for designing, by designing.

Coders, too, show love for coding, by coding.

Deeper loves come from deeper connection with your art. Deeper love comes from
developing your connection with your art in all ways.

Coders shouldn't just code, but love understanding everything that is around
it.

Painters seek to understand deeper, and then express the world around them.

Writers seek to understand deeper, and then express the world around them.

Love is seeking, spreading, creating, providing, support, love, for the sake
of love. Love is choosing possibility over doubt. Love is choosing creativity
before logic and finding a way. Love is protecting creativity and ideas so
much so that they may quiver towards the sky, much like we quiver in
relationships involving love.

To put it simply (and still not scratch the surface); love is creating,
experiencing, for the sake of creation, experience, and learning.

0.02

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dshipper
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing that :)

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j45
Glad you enjoyed. :)

I just wish I wasn't half groggy with a cold when writing it and left some
typos in it.

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bluekeybox
How about we start from something simpler: "Don't hate what you do." Once you
start there, perhaps you will find love/passion, or at least become more
productive.

I've known too many people who secretly hated what they do for a living. I
suppose it's fine if you already have a beautiful wife/children/life outside
work to compensate, but hating your work is not the best way to begin your
career.

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dshipper
I agree that another way to look at it is "don't hate what you do" although I
feel like a post about that would be aimed at a different group of people.

When I wrote this it was more directed at people who feel a little bit lost,
and are wondering why they haven't found that one "thing" that they're
passionate about. It's about telling them that they don't have to search so
hard for it because it's probably right in front of them right now.

I think people that hate what they do are in a slightly different (though
similar boat). Sometimes hating what you do can actually crystallize exactly
what it is you love (because you can't do it as much anymore) and so I feel
like the problem that those people face is more making the leap to spend time
doing what you love even if it means taking more risk.

Thanks for sharing - I really agree with your point.

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evincarofautumn
Thank you for this. This is exactly how I feel about programming, and about
love. I’m 21, finishing my fourth and final year of college, and have been
programming since around 10 as well, so far as I can recall. When I started,
it was just something I did because it was fun to make stuff—web pages, games,
toy languages, that sort of thing. It wasn’t until probably 2006 that I
realised how it had grown on me, so much that I really don’t want to imagine
my life without it. Any skills or knowledge I have gained are owed to the
obsession of one smitten.

To quote Tim Minchin (If I Didn’t Have You):

“If I may conjecture a further objection, love is nothing to do with destined
perfection. The connection is strengthened, the affection simply grows over
time, like a flower, or a mushroom, or a guinea pig, or a vine, or a sponge,
or bigotry. Or a banana. And love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama
of shared experience and synergy, and symbiotic empathy. Or…something.”

That about sums up my feeling on the matter.

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jason_shah
Excellent post, Dan. Enjoyed getting your perspective.

\--

One of the hardest things about identifying what you love is acknowledging
that it is rarely black and white. Yet people + media romanticize a notion of
"perfect" love that has no lows or flaws, and the average person buys into
this. As a result, we often feel as though we still haven't found what we love
because it's not an unequivocal love.

With hacking, there will always be frustrating bugs and grunt work.

With romantic love, there will always be ugly fights and unappealing
compromises.

And so on.

It would be disingenuous for people to say that they love commenting their
code or that they enjoy every bit of arguing with their significant other. But
having the wisdom to know yourself and accurately "measure" the _extent_ to
which you love something relative to other experiences in life is tremendously
powerful.

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dshipper
Thanks Jason! Great point - loving what you do doesn't mean that you love
every part of it, or every second of it - saying that is usually just
meaningless hyperbole. But if you truly love something you put up with the
stuff that you don't like as much because doing so is the cost of producing
something great, being with someone great, or becoming part of something
bigger than yourself.

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TimGebhardt
"Love doesn't start out as a hurricane that sweeps through your life and
changes everything in an instant. It starts out as a seed. Barely alive,
easily overlooked, fragile and small. But given attention love grows. Given
proper care it sprouts and springs up through the dirt. Given years to blossom
it buds flowers and grows branches, snaking its way through your life until it
consumes it entirely. Given enough care the thing that you love becomes the
lens through which you see the world. "

I might borrow this next time I have to give a toast at a wedding or a
rehearsal dinner. I don't have to mention to anyone it's career advice... :)

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greggman
If that works for you great but that's not how it worked for me. I didn't have
to think "do I love coding?" I just did it from 8th grade onward because it
was extremely fun for me.

Similarly for relationships. I've been in love before and I didn't have to ask
myself "am I in love" I just knew it "balls to bones" as Neo was told by the
Oracle.

I didn't have to just keep doing it at wondering if this was really my thing.
It was my thing without thinking.

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MoOmer
I think he's talking about people who never really jumped into programming. I
had an XDCC server up and running by 5th grade, and my own website with decent
traffic by 6th. Then I went a different route with my technical affinity.

Now I'm back, realizing that this is the path I wish I would have taken; and,
instead of lamenting or trying to find other things to fill the programming
void, I'm going for it.

Sure, it's not as fun - yet - as I remember. But I know that in the end, this
is what I want to do.

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HackR
You've been coding for 10 years and you're a sophomore?!

I'm a sophomore at 19yrs old and that would mean I would have to have been
coding since age 9...

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dshipper
Yup I'm 20 and started when I was 10. It's been a good 10 years :)

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Tyrant505
Do any other beginners / wannabies get really depressed when hearing about
such a head start? :) Keep rocking.

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mgkimsal
10 years doesn't necessarily mean all that much. You might have only 3-4 years
of experience, but if it's _good_ experience, it'll beat the pants off 10
years of crap experience. Not saying anything about dshipper's situation, just
in general length of time doing something doesn't necessarily make you that
much better.

I say this as someone who's been working with software for 30 years,
professionally for 17 years. I've gotten a lot better over the 17 years,
thanks to many of the experiences and time I spent learning things. I've also
been playing guitar for over 20 years, and am still pretty lousy at that. :)

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dshipper
Agree completely - the length of time has nothing to do with the quality of
your work. I have a friend who started coding a year ago and is in YC right
now as the main technical founder. I'd say I've learned more about
entrepreneurship and coding in the past year than I did over the past 4-5
combined.

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realitygrill
How'd he manage that? It's quite impressive.

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dshipper
Hard work and willingness to put himself out there.

