2015 - Passion vs. Practical

A position/profile piece I wrote as part of my coursework at SUNY New Paltz.

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Architect Maribel Guerrero sits in her office at the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design with her head in her hand. She stares out the window looking over Midtown, Manhattan. ‘She’s supposed to be finalizing the floor plan for a new office complex, but today, her heart is just not in it. Her mind is somewhere else. A painting.

Back at her apartment she sits in her studio facing a blank canvas. Her enthusiasm is obvious as she swirls the brush in a shade of deep, eggplant purple she has just made, a color that is a mixture of carefully measured amounts of hydrangea blue, rose, and even a pinprick charcoal black. Just right. Her steady hand pulls the brush across the canvas with practiced, yet fresh, stimulating and abstract accuracy. She does not know what the final product will be, and that lack of predetermined structure is what she loves about art.

Guerrero’s passion is art. Messy, studio, hands-on art. Painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, all of it. “If I could,” she muses, “it would take up my entire world. And I wish it could.”

Why can’t it?

It’s simple. Guerrero needs to make a living, and it’s not just a stereotype that average artist isn’t exactly well off. You have to know the business, and the people to get anywhere. It really isn’t about talent.

Now it is not true for everyone but there is definitely a gap between what most people regard as their passion and what they end of choosing as a career field. It is a choice people make that effects their entire life and it often happens when they are very young. Once we realize we need to work to make a living, reality sets in and passion fades out. Guerrero is just one example of someone who has put her dream to the side to pursue a more “practical” career. It’s still a part of her life, but it takes second place. Second priority.

Guerrero’s 2- and 3D art has been shown at dozens of galleries, bars, exhibition spaces, and institutions over the years. In October of 2004 she had her first showing at the Monroe Arts Center as part of the Artist Studio Tour in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her most recent exhibition was last year in the Progression Show with Arthouse Productions in Jersey City.

As an artist, Guerrero has sold some of her paintings and photographs. “I try to price my work so that someone like me could afford it,” she mentions.

But these profits are not enough to support her.

When young people seek career advice, they are often fed cliché lines such as, “Follow your dream!” or “Follow your passion and you will never work a day in your life!” But is

this really good advice? It is a fact we all embrace at one time or another. Alison Green puts it simply in her article, “Why You Shouldn’t Follow Your Passion,” published in the Career/Money section of the U.S. News & World Report website. “Most passions don’t line up with paying careers.” Her article suggests that though there are not many opportunities in the job market for these kinds of passion-driven activities, people should look for jobs that will be stable enough for them to pursue these activities outside of the workplace.

Students entering college often choose their major or field of study based on what they, at the time, think they want to do for the rest of their working lives after they graduate. There, again, is a disconnect. If a student loves art, like Guerrero when she attended the New Jersey Institute of Technology, they have to face an inevitable choice.

The first option is to try to follow their passion, whether it may be drawing, painting, sculpting, collaging, photography, printmaking, etc. They are often encouraged by their loved ones and peers. These people want to be a positive influence and they will say something along the lines of “if this is what you love, then you will make it work.”

The second option is the more practical outlook. To find a field of study that incorporates an aspect of their passion but channels it into a subject area where there is more of a job market for graduates. Architecture, graphic design, product design, and advertising are just a few examples of how this can work for an aspiring art student.

Guerrero chose architecture. Her chosen profession and college degree in architecture allows her to make a living as an architect. Through architecture she can express her creative side, as well as her intricate technical abilities designing functional structures. Guerrero’s career in architecture, she points out, is incredibly “complex, difficult, and richly rewarding.”

The admin of The Equinox, the student run publication of Keene State College, wrote that it is “a difficult balance to figure out. It’s the paradigm of passion vs. practicality. Who else wanted to be a rock star? Astronaut? Business tycoon, video game tester, stuntman, the star quarterback. How many dreams have been given up in the pursuit of a ‘real career?’ Unfortunately, we’re being forced to choose. How likely is it that we’ll be one of the 20-some actors and actresses that grace the silver screen a dozen times a year?”

Last year, billionaire businessman, Mark Cuban created a blog entitled, “Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort.” He begins by saying that the advice of follow your passion “is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.” He explains that it is the effort that leads to success not the passion. Thus it would make more sense to “follow the things you are willing to put effort into rather than do what you are passionate about.”

It is also said that choosing a career that is directly in line with a passion may cause one to lose interest in the passion itself. There is an example in Green’s article:

“Turning what you love into a career can ruin what you loved about it. You might love to bake, and your friends might regularly swoon over your cakes and tell you to open a bakeshop. But getting up at the crack of dawn every day, baking 100 cakes daily, and dealing with difficult customers and the stress and finances of running your own business might have nothing to do with what you love about baking—and might sap the joy right out of it.”

So are the people that choose careers that parallel but do not exploit their passion happy with their decision?

According to Susan Adams’ article “New Survey: Majority of Employees Dissatisfied,” published in Forbs Magazine in May of 2012, out of 411 workers surveyed in the U.S. and Canada, “only 19% said they were satisfied with their jobs. Another 16% said they were ‘somewhat satisfied.’ But the rest, nearly two-thirds of respondents, said they were not happy at work. Twenty-one percent said they were ‘somewhat unsatisfied’ and 44% said they were ‘unsatisfied.’”

The article goes on to mention that at a time of high unemployment, lackluster job growth and major uncertainty in world financial markets, many employees feel stuck in their jobs, unable to consider a career move even if they are unhappy.

People are stuck in careers they are dissatisfied with. This can be for a variety of reasons but one of them is that they may be indifferent toward their job position. It isn’t something they care about—and with no motivation, it’s hard to escape.

So, can you find time for your passion if it isn’t your professional career?

Guerrero doesn’t find it as hard as some do. She says her career does not really take away from her art; it’s not something she has to try to find time for: “It grabs me, when I least expect it, like at 4am. I don’t consider it a priority, I consider it a part of me, of my day.”

“But,” she notes with a slight downturn of the corners of her mouth, “I would diffidently invest more time into it if I didn’t have my day job.”