Do What Makes You Money and the Love Will Follow!

This had been my mantra since I first read about making money in real estate rentals in my late teens.  I took that mantra with me when I joined several different multi-level marketing groups, I took it with me into real estate, I took it with me into the tech industry, I took it with me into poker.  “Do what makes you money and the love will follow.”  Guess what I found out?  It doesn’t work that way. 

Is anyone surprised?

After getting fired for the first time in my life almost four years ago, I had a partial change of heart.  And, yes, I was in one of those jobs that was supposed to make me super rich.  Oh, and I got fired for doing something else that was going to make me rich – playing poker.  I won’t go into tremendous detail here – suffice to say that I continued to think that poker would make me some decent money up until a couple of months ago. 

I’ve played poker on and off for the past six years.  I am one of the few who has ended their poker playing career in positive territory.  If you were to figure it all out, I’d be shocked if I made more that $3 an hour playing poker.  Not a good return on my time.  Sure, there were times when I loved the game, but eventually, I realized that it was just ripping the soul out of me.  Even as a winning player, I had to endure some incredibly long down swings.  It is no fun ending night after night not having performed as well as you would have liked.  The nature of the game is that you just don’t win money that often, but when you do, they can be fairly substantial wins.  Bottom line:  the small number of times you win is not worth the energy lost in the great number of times you lose.  (You can read more about my lessons from poker here: Quitting Something You are Good at Is Never Easy.)

About three years ago, when I was fired from that job that was going to make me rich, my mother and step-father gave me an incredible gift.  To understand this gift, you have to understand what kind of person I was.  Even I wouldn’t have given myself this gift if I’d known me at the time.  My mom said to me, “Come live with us, and find the career you really want.”  Huh?  Are you serious?  I didn’t deserve this.  It was pretty clear at this time that I was suffering through a serious poker addiction.  How could they possibly even think of doing this for me?  Despite the wonderful offer, and my acceptance of it at the tender age of 41, I only gave up my addiction temporarily.  However, I did decide to pursue a different mantra for once – “Do what you love, and the money will follow.”

The job I have loved more than anything in my entire life was working with children – elementary school children.  Not only did I love it, but I was really good at it.  I was a natural around kids.  So, I had the good fortune of being in a position to become an elementary school teacher. (Read more about that in this blog entry:  Some Curses Bring Great Blessings.) I have been doing that for three years now.

I am blessed to be following that love, but I have another love that is equally strong – that is the love of writing.  I have not followed my love of writing to the degree I would have liked because I felt committed to two other endeavors – teaching – which I truly loved, and poker – which I was finding increasingly irritating.  Exit poker, enter writing. 

To be honest, I don’t know if writing will make me money, in fact, I am pretty certain that it won’t.  But it doesn’t matter to me anymore.  I just love doing it.  Writing this blog has truly been a healing process for me.  Every night I finish a blog entry, I go to bed feeling calm and serene.  I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment.  It is a completely different feeling from what I have felt for 95% of the nights I played poker.  Writing soothes my soul, it improves my health, and, if some of the responses I am receiving are any indication, it helps people. 

My mother and step-father paid me the ultimate act of unconditional love when they offered to let me share the roof over their head.  Of course, my step-dad will only half jokingly say that they expect a return on their investment!  But, heck, they’ve earned it!  I will forever be grateful for this incredible gift.  Without it, I honestly don’t know where I would be.

I have tried, “Do what makes you money and the love will follow.”  I can tell you it doesn’t work.  I have only just begun to, “Do what I love.”  In fact, I am now doing the two things I love.  Believe it or not, whether money follows is inconsequential – I am so happy with my life right now, it doesn’t matter if I make any more money than I already am.  Naturally, if it should come in my direction, I will be more than delighted to accept it!

I really want to thank all of you who are following this blog that have written to let me know how you feel about it.  It warms my heart to know that my writing is not only positive for my own well-being, but that many of you have found it to be helpful as well.  Please know that I love receiving comments – either directly through my email, or to the comments section.  If you just want to make a comment, but don’t want it published, just let me know.  Oh, and I can handle constructive criticism, as well!