

Ask HN: To those trying to pursue their passion but failing, do you regret it? - refrigerator

For the millionth time, I&#x27;ve heard the &quot;pursue your passion&quot; speech. I can&#x27;t help but wonder what happens to people who tried to pursue their passion but failed, and are now looking around to see their peers achieving &quot;success&quot;.
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MichaelCrawford
Sometimes.

Lately I have been but it was pointed out to me by Kuro5hin's tdillo that
those who pursue the righteous path rarely get any credit for it during their
lifetimes.

The reason I'm going to go work in the library this morning, is that I don't
have the cash to buy a coffee at Starbucks. It really is that bad.

On the other hand, I am - at least at times - able to feel pretty good that
the work I do has a lot more lasting value than does that of your typical
coder.

~~~
refrigerator
Thanks for the reply. If you don't mind me asking - what exactly are you
trying to do now and what did you give up to try and do this?

~~~
MichaelCrawford
What I gave up was any real hope at getting a job, this because I quite
prominently link to two of my essays about my mental illness at the top of
each page of my website: [http://www.warplife.com/](http://www.warplife.com/)

"Living with Schizoaffective Disorder" comes across to most people as lucid,
informative and helpful, but I regard it as rather pedestrian myself. It
claims that "I want to tell you what it's like to live inside my head", but
really, it doesn't.

What does tell you is "My Deepest Fear". I've been tossed involuntarily into
psychiatric hospitals on three different occasions - twice by the police, in
handcuffs - for no other reason than simply mentioning that essay to mental
health professions. This despite not having been symptomatic in any way at the
time I wrote it. That it reads like a paranoid manifesto was rather like the
literary equivalent of a stage actor being "in character".

I'm pursuing some software projects that I have some real hope of succeeding
with through crowdfunding, however in reality I regard hosting my software on
my site, as a way to attract readers and inlinks to those two essays.

It is flatly illegal, in the United States, to discriminate against the
mentally ill for reasons of employment. That doesn't make any difference to
me; I still get no offers.

I could sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act however I feel very
strongly in the assertion that "the best response to hate speech is more
speech". Consider that had the Weimar Republic passed a law like the ADA, it
would not have stopped Hitler from putting people like me to death.

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bitshepherd
I "pursued my passion" for a while, but the comfort of having a full-time job
with a relatively fixed schedule for getting paid was too much at the time, so
I started chasing the dollar. To the point where I moved to SV to enter the
ratrace. It's starting to pay off a little, but I'm still clocking in at a
cube farm for ~8 hours a day. YMMV

