Find What You Love and Let It Kill You

James Rhodes

I came across this article (and the accompanying videos) at Steven Pressfield’s blog (which I read faithfully–it’s brilliant). The article originally appeared in The Guardian, and I promise you (if you are one of those creative crazy people like me, always looking for inspiration), you will love it, too.

James Rhodes: Find What You Love and Let It Kill You (link to The Guardian article)

My friend Karen W. once told me something that, despite many years of gainful and sometimes soul-sucking employment, I have never forgotten. The world has plenty of business majors and people who will do anything for money. If you can do what you love, because you love it, even if you never make money at it–that’s your gift to the world. 

Did you hear that? Here’s how James Rhodes puts it: “Do the math. We can function—sometimes quite brilliantly—on six hours’ sleep a night. Eight hours of work was more than good enough for centuries (oh the desperate irony that we actually work longer hours since the invention of the internet and smartphones). Four hours will amply cover picking the kids up, cleaning the flat, eating, washing and the various etceteras. We are left with six hours. 360 minutes to do whatever we want. Is what we want simply to numb out and give Simon Cowell even more money? To scroll through Twitter and Facebook looking for romance, bromance, cats, weather reports, obituaries and gossip? To get nostalgically, painfully drunk in a pub where you can’t even smoke?”

Read the article and watch the videos. I mean it!