Find your passion

This post is part of a 30 days series called the 30 steps program to financial independence. You can check the list of other posts here.

On your way towards financial independence, it may be very hard for you to stay behind a desk for 50 hours a week, dreaming of what life would be like, and pestering about how old you would be (65 or more) when you retire and can at last enjoy life.

I couldn’t stand my last office job. I was not financially independent when I gave my resignation, but I couldn’t take any more of the office crap. So I made a list of ways I could earn money without hating my job so much. Fun fact, the happiest I have ever been at a job was a student job at McD. Weird, right? Well it was a mix of the right team, the right boss, and having a simple job that I wasn’t taking home with me at night. I just had to cross the street to work, and once it was over, it was really over.

Then I moved up the corporate ladder and things got worse. Commuting time, cranky coworkers, bully boss, and other terrible things made me want to quit asap.

So I listed the jobs I would be happy to go to. Most of them were related to passions of mine. You can love mechanics, traveling, working for an NGO or waiting tables at your local joint, where all the neighbors gather.

But for you or me to wake up with a smile every morning, we need passion in our lives. Passion makes it easier, it makes you work for the work, not for the money. Think about it for a second. That high paying job of yours, to maintain a crazy lifestyle, the mansion, the big car, the pile of credit card debt, is it worth the long hours and the crazy schedule?

Not for me. So if I live a simple lifestyle, almost any minimum wage job would maintain me. It should pay for a small flat or house, food and other necessities. And it should give me a LOT of time.

Another ideal is to freelance in your passion field. You know a great deal about X or Y, start a blog, organize a conference, offer your services around.

What I mean by that is that your work or what you do is not really important. What is important is that you love what you do and are happy to do it over and over again. Try to find your passion, be a barista, a farmer or a CEO if you feel like it, and life will be much better.