Passion, Not Just Paycheck

Passion, not just Paycheck

by Caleb Cuzner

Teachers and parents love asking young children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“An astronaut!” “An artist!”

“An actor!”

“The President of the United States!”

The adults then respond with words of support and excitement. They have the kids make drawings about their dreams and then pin it on the wall, admiring the child’s ambition.

Teachers and parents then ask an18-year-old high school graduate, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“An astronaut!”

“That is a difficult field to get into, I think you might want to choose something more practical,” they say.

“An artist!”

“You won’t be able to support a family with that career. You’ll be starving and your marriage will struggle.”

“An actor!”

“You have to be good to be an actor. Very few people can actually make a career out of that. You should choose something with better odds.”

“The President of the United States!”

“I think you’re shooting a little too high. Maybe you should just be a lawyer instead.”

I find this mentality, which occurs in far too many households, to be ironic. Children are taught in school to chase their dreams. Then once they are on their own, the same people who told them to chase their dreams too often tell them to abandon them. It seems that society wants everyone to choose their career based on paycheck alone. Society says to choose a career that guarantees a stable job that can support a family.

I would hate to break it to them, but no career truly guarantees a stable job. If someone pursues a career for paycheck alone, what will they do when they find out that their field is oversaturated and then get laid off, spending the rest of their life looking for a job? What will  their family think when they come home from work miserable every day because they do not enjoy what they do for a living? How enjoyable can it possibly be to countdown to the weekends, staring at the clock waiting for it to move faster, dreaming of a future retirement instead of a present joy?

We spend most of our life working a job. We are free as children to laugh and play, but childhood only lasts so long. Our bodies are rapidly aging during retirement, which may only last a decade or two before death. Life is too short and too precious to spend it being miserable just

so we can make money. Parenthood is too brief to spend it showing our children how miserable the world makes us in order to put food on the table, just for our children to feel obligated to go through the same misery when they become parents.

Those who hold society’s opinion but put on a façade of ambition tell young adults to look at a list of lucrative careers and then choose which one they like. I contend that this strategy will too often prevent a young adult from having a lucrative career they enjoy. Making a list of lucrative careers relies on society’s biases and stereotypes to decide which careers are lucrative.

This method is easily susceptible to ignorance, causing these young adults to possibly face disappointment when they find that their job is not as lucrative as they hoped. I think it is much wiser to instead tell young adults to make a list of careers they enjoy and then research how to make those careers lucrative. They are then knowledgeable and free to choose the career that has their ideal balance between income and happiness.

What inspires me when choosing a career? I want a career that I am passionate about and will never grow sick of. I want a creative career that gives me satisfaction about the results of my work. I want a career focused on a skill that I can singularly develop into mastery. I want a

career that inspires my future children to chase their dreams. I want a career that makes a noticeable difference in the world. Not a difference to take credit for, but a difference that lets me know that I am helping society become a better place.

What career am I pursuing? I am working to support my future family as a music composer for games, film, and other media. I was first inspired to pursue this career when I discovered that my passion was not what I thought it was. At a young age, I wanted to program computer games for a living. I programmed many games in my childhood. When I was 13, I wrote a full-length soundtrack for a game I made. When visiting an online forum for help with programming that game, I noticed that composers at that forum were running composing services to write music for other people’s games. I decided to give running a composing service a try.

It turned out that writing custom music for game developers gave me adrenaline and drive. I was creating soundtrack after soundtrack, and these developers loved my work and used it in their games. I felt I was part of a production bigger than just one person. I also realized that if I pursued a career programming games, I would soon grow weary of debugging those games.

I ended up running my composing service for nearly a decade, longer than any of the other composers at that programming forum. Recently I have been finding more opportunities to compose for clients from other sources. I have written more than 1,000 compositions to date for games, videos, podcasts, and live performances. I am living a dream, and am using my university studies to help me master my craft so I can support a family.

I want to change the world with my music by writing for wholesome media, free of sexuality, vulgarity, and excessive gore. I feel that inappropriate media can drive families apart with its carnal themes, and can cause children to undervalue human life with its absurd amounts of violence. I want to master my craft so I can write music that increases people’s enjoyment of wholesome media. I want my music to win awards so its award-winning status can be used to bring the wholesome media it accompanies into the spotlight. I want be skilled as a composer so that game developers and film directors will be willing to omit inappropriate content from their productions so that they can hire me for their soundtrack. I dream of a world that prioritizes quality entertainment over carnal entertainment.

As I pursue my career as a composer for media, I hope to inspire children to chase their dreams. I hope I can be an influence towards helping society change its viewpoint from choosing a career based on paycheck to choosing a career based on passion. I am inspired by all those who chase their dreams, and those who prove that they can make a living doing what they love. I am inspired by a drive to live a fulfilled life and a commitment to help others do the same. I am inspired by the possibility of bringing families closer together by promoting wholesome entertainment. Most important of all, I am inspired by the opportunity to support my own future family with a career that I love.

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