There’s a Confucius proverb that says, “Choose a job you love, and you never have to work a day in your life.“
I think, at this point, if you follow my blog, you know that I love Web design and Web development. I do it in my spare time as well as when someone is willing to pay me for my services. I even dream about Web design, it wakes me up at night and all I want to do is dive into either a Photoshop document and create something from scratch or into XHTML/CSS code. In short, I love what I do.
Until now, it has felt like the art of muddling through. Web design excites me more than any prior work ever has. It is something that I have taught myself through many years and tutorials on how to design and code for the semantic Web.
What I find most illustrative of this joy I have for Web design and coding is that I can dive into my work coding or designing and not look up for hours. Often, I ignore my bodily needs to eat and, at times, even drink water, and next thing you know it is seven or eight hours later and I notice the time. I say to myself, “Have I really been working this long without a break today?”
This very thing happened last weekend, when I thought I was making a quick edit to my site. I was there for four or five hours passionately pursuing a change in the design of my site at WillHull.com. I modified the footer and made it a “fat” footer to decrease the amount of scrolling on my homepage.
I love Web design. Just like falling in love with another person, you know it when you have found your calling. I am secure in saying that I have found mine.
Now, I’ll admit that I don’t know everything there is to know about Web design. If I did, I would also be omnipotent. That’s one of the reasons why I love doing what I do.
If there is something I don’t know, I teach myself by either reverse engineering a known instance of it or seeking out a tutorial on how to do it. There aren’t many other trades out there that I feel this passionate about.
What about you? What are you passionate about? Have you found your calling in life yet?
Share it with those who follow this blog and why you feel so passionate about what you do. Do you agree that when you know you’ve found your calling you just know and you could do it day or night and regardless if someone paid you to do it or not?
