

Pay your dues - ValentineC
https://medium.com/i-dont-know-a-thing/a38a483250fd

======
IsaacL
Hear, hear. I spent most of yesterday afternoon reading Cal Newport's blog and
the first few chapters of his book "So Good They Can't Ignore You". His thesis
is basically that the idea of "following your passion" is _incredibly_
misleading, and that you should instead focus on building "career capital"
which will open up better opportunities over time. (Career capital as I see it
refers to the combination of skills, relationships and unique insights that
you get from working intently in a particular field for a length of time).

It's something that resonates a lot with me, after bumming around a lot asking
"is this what I _really_ want to do?" I eventually realised that the whole "do
what you love and you will never work a day in your life" is simply a fantasy.
Of all the infinite things you could be doing, you will never know if you are
doing the best or most important thing. Doesn't matter. Your life is not
_that_ important. You will never be able to put an end to the questioning and
self-doubt. Doesn't matter. You can learn to enjoy the questioning, and
appreciate that you are one of the privileged 0.1% of humans who actually get
to choose what they do with their lives.

One other thought: why do people believe they can do it overnight? I think
it's because we see (what look like) overnight successes. On closer inspection
they are no such thing.

I can't be the only Hacker News reader who, at the age of 19, thought "hey,
that Mark Zuckerberg guy made a website that made him rich at age 19, I can
make websites, ergo I can be the next Mark Zuckerberg!" But to emulate Zuck
you have to look at what he was doing at age 14. Turns out he was building
successful tech products for several years before he started working on
Facebook. Then you get cases like Nick from Summly, which looks like a
combination of rich parents, savvy investors and a desperate buyer (Yahoo).
All that is true. Luck and circumstances did play a part in his particular
success. But he's still a very smart guy who wouldn't have achieved what he
did without intelligence and hard graft.

------
rquantz
I feel like I'm running into this problem, to an extent. I'll revise what the
OP said, though: I think freelancing right out of the gate is great when
you're young and don't need a super reliable income -- you get to experiment
and learn in a low stakes environment (because nobody is handing you million
dollar accounts) where no one is constantly lookig over your shoulder.
However, I'm starting to find that there are limits to how much I can learn on
my own, and there's a limit to how successful I can be at this without any
real industry ties.

~~~
stevewillows
I came here to write this exact thing. I'm 33 and freelanced for the better
part of the last 15 years. At the time I thought it was a blessing, but the
industry I mainly serve is over saturated and I'm finding it difficult to find
a group that will hire someone like me.

If I could do it again I would have gone to school and worked through an
agency as my main stream while working on select projects in the side.

------
bryanlarsen
This strategy will be much harder if you have to sign a non-compete agreement.

~~~
pjrvs
i haven't seen one of those in almost a decade! and i still do work for F500s
ad bigger companies.

------
edem
Can you try it again with some less "fuck" in it? Maybe I'll finish reading it
that time.

~~~
rquantz
You just used the word you're so offended by. Can we all stop pretending that
grownups don't use swear words? It seems like there's been a deluge of
language concern trolls lately.

~~~
pjrvs
i'm always surprised swearing is actually a conversation. who cares? it's so
trivial a discussion to have when really it comes down to writing style and
voice.

ps: i'm not a grownup and i swear all the fucking time (as is evident in the
article we're all commenting on), ha.

------
andrew_wc_brown
Why is this proclaimed gentleman swearing so much in blog post?

~~~
pjrvs
here's why i swear: <http://pjrvs.com/profanity/> (i wrote the article in
question)

