You might love numbers, you might love livestock or you might like trains. Whatever it is that makes you tick, make it your passion. Otherwise you’re going to be bored as f*ck.

I was reading a piece last week, a very interesting piece in fact. It profiled modern life, you know the drill — it investigated how we’re a different breed to the generations that went before. Metrosexuals, weekends in Paris, social media. Back in the day Bert Trautmann played with a broken neck, nowadays Cristiano Ronaldo wouldn’t play with a broken nail. Society has undergone significant changes, which the population have never really caught up with. In this new world one thing is for certain — your career is imperative.

You can say it isn’t but it is. You can trot out the usual my work is only a small part of me, I get in, I get out drill. You my friend are very wrong. If like Hennessey said back in the 2000’s ‘time is too precious to waste’ why are you doing exactly that?

I spend well over 60 hours representing my agency, that’s over a third of my week. And on occasion it can push up closer to half. Of the rest I spend forty seven or less sleeping, four playing football, two writing, five eating and fifteen drinking. Coffee, cycling and tweeting all fit in there somewhere as well.

What’s important is that of that 60+ hours that I commit to work, well over 50 of them contain laughter. During that time I am happy, stimulated and motivated. I’m lucky. Most people, usually accountants, never quite feel this.

Ever use public transport on a Monday morning? How sad do some people look? It’s like the walk of the condemned. Life isn’t about that.

So why am I not that guy?

Simple. I do what I love and I do it often.

I watch movies, I eat prawns, I run, I create, I write, I play football, I laugh with friends, I spend time with my parents, I say yes often, I help people. I enjoy my life. I go to the theatre, I eat Ice Cream, I sing (badly). Point is I’m not constrained by others; their opinions rarely reflect my actions. Even though it sounds wanky…I feel free. And I reckon that’s what we all long for.

I didn’t always feel this way though. Right here, right now I can’t imagine working in a non-creative industry. If I rewind way back to my first graduate job after uni I shudder. 18 months later I was sat in my antique Ford Fiesta making a pact with myself that has shaped my life and removed mind- numbing senselessness.

This pact still stands today. It’s a guide to my daily life. I’ve refined it over the years, tweaked and bettered it. I added the caveat that money wouldn’t define me. And although it’s a simplistic way to view life’s challenges it works. There is a beauty in its simplicity.

It’s made me realise that I don’t want to buy a house until I’m well into my thirties, that I want to teach orphans English in Argentina and that I want to do a triathlon. It made me drop it all and spend 3 months building sanitation facilities in an Indian village last year.

It removes the rational which I’m afraid is what often holds us back.

Title Photo credit: flickr

This article also appears on Medium and is published here with the permission of the author