Da Susta

My brer (who is younger, but not by a whole helluva' lot) once told me he regrets turning something he enjoyed into his profession. He said after a while it just becomes a job and you end up hating it. He used to enjoy tinkering with cars and now he hates it. He hates dealing with cars and problems and the people associated with them.

To a certain degree, I agree with him. If you only enjoy it, eventually it will become just a way to put food on the table. Kind of like enjoying pastrami; eat it occasionally and you enjoy it but if you eat it every friggin' day you'll get sick of it and eventually probably grow to hate it. But if he were passionate about something, that might be different.

But I think that's the problem with 90% of the working population- we can't find what we're passionate about and if we do, we don't know how to turn it into a career. Some people do. Some people take the risks necessary to do what they want and then reap the rewards.

Take Rob Zombie, my current role model (why someone my age needs a role model is a whole other story), for example. Here's a guy who, for whatever reason, wasn't afraid to walk the path less traveled. He did crazy shit like work as a designer on the set of Pee Wee's Playhouse. For crying out loud he started a band and he didn't know how to play any instruments! For one of his albums instead of letting the label go cheap on the sleeve art he designed, Rob ponied up the bucks himself. This is a man who is passionate about his art and about what he does. And you can see it dripping off the CD covers he designs and in the music he creates.

Then there's those guys from Miami Ink. In order to make a living inking people up, they also took paths less traveled. They've spent a lot of time on the road, putting their necks out their to start their own shops and risking their reputations and others' skin to push their art and individual style forward. That takes fucking balls. Now they're doing what I'd like to do because they took the risks and have the passion necessary to make the sacrifices they were willing to make.

So, as I sit at this computer, looking out the window, I'm wondering what the hell I'm passionate about. I know it isn't what I'm doing now. The bigger question is that once I find it, will have the huevos necessary to chase it down? I guess that's the problem my brer faces as well.