> >You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race.
This is asking the wrong question. A few weeks ago I ran into quote on hackernews... [1]
“Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.”
I hope I'm not stretching this too far as I'm not too good about explaining stuff like this. But, my take away is that you'll discover the things that pay the bills and the things that don't are one of the same. The difficulty of life is finding that peace.
Before you know how you do something it just looks like what it is on the surface. Might even look easy for most things.
Software development is easy right? Bunch of for loops and ifs to tell a computer what to do!
Then you start learning. What do you mean 0s and 1s? That are actually different voltages somewhere on a tiny piece of silicon and metals? Assembler? Compilers? Machine code? A gate? What's an Adder? What's a program counter and what does that have to do with that German dude? (von Neumann ;))
You finally master all this and it becomes second nature or you figure out where you can 'ignore' and still be productive (I remember how I learned how multiplication is actually done on a simple computer and all that but I no longer actively need to know in my day to day work). This just an example but this applies on many many levels and one reason I see all the time for why people get stuck on a problem is because they can't ignore or figure out what to ignore. A very simple one is the ability to just read a stack trace. They simply get lost in the parts I instinctively fly over and don't even fully recognize to find the important part.
And that's when it's just a punch again. It's second nature. Don't even need to actively think. Your subconscious is doing it for you.
How?
I find satisfaction in many things, but none of those things pay the bills or put food on the table.