When I work a job that truly resonates with me, my creative resources evaporate during the workday. Acknowledging this now causes me less frustration than it used to in the past.
The alternative would be having a boring job that doesn’t spark my interest, so that my brain is not fully hijacked during the day and I’m left with something to dedicate to my evening passions. However, I am not a fan of that at all; spending nine hours doing something I don’t care about is torture—at least for me. After a while, I usually start to resent everything related to an unchallenging, uninteresting job.
I never seriously considered turning a passion into a project worth diverting all my focus and resources onto. The reasons are a mix of risk aversion, which characterizes me, and contentment with the life and hobbies I already have. Why complicate things by taking on projects I don’t feel genuinely moved or interested in? There was a time when this brought a degree of uncertainty, and from time to time I still reflect on similar topics. I’ve written before about moving forward without a clear destination, about repeated attempts that don’t crystallize into a single narrative of progress.
Questioning usually arises when I stop listening to myself and start listening to external noise instead. Not having a personal project—whether entrepreneurial, family-related, or centered on traveling the world—is often treated as a failure of direction, when in reality it can simply mean refusing to force coherence where none exists yet. My free time is spent on various hobbies rather than a single, defining goal. The things I do bring me joy and contentment.
What I do find overwhelming is the expectation that any meaningful interest should eventually turn into something bigger—more structured, more visible, more competitive. Especially today, when knowledge is widely accessible and comparison is constant, the bar for individual achievement seems perpetually raised, even in spaces that were once meant to be personal and restorative.
The best thing, perhaps, is not to lose one’s mind over this or that personal project, fueled by delusions of grandeur, external pressure, or whatever else creates a sense of urgency around self-realization. Instead, it’s to do something that simply brings us a bit of extra pleasure during our free time. As it used to be in the past: you would go fishing to spend time with friends over a beer, or alone to meditate, or simply to disconnect in nature—not to go fishing with the purpose of posting it on some random social media page. You would do it because you liked it and wanted it.
Over time, I’ve learned that the problem isn’t a lack of ambition, but a lack of gentleness. Toward time. Toward energy. Toward ourselves. Accepting that not every phase of life needs a defining project has been less about giving up, and more about staying sane and true to oneself.
It’s true, though, that this mindset is, at this stage, sadly collectively installed in our brains. The expectations one nowadays has about life are insanely unachievable within a single lifetime, and yet we collectively fall for them.
Maybe the quiet rebellion today is not to optimize every passion or turn every interest into a performance, but to allow parts of life to remain unproductive, unambitious, and ours alone.
