Do What You Want, Forget Money
I saw this video a long time ago and I am so glad that I found it again. I saw this video when I was really thinking about 'life' and my parents were asking me what I wanted to do as I had any idea and ultimately it came down to being a English teacher because I love reading books and sharing books with other people. I have been very fortunate to have fantastic English teachers who actually like what they do. I was at a youth event with my church and I was talking to my youth leader and he asked me if I still wrote. I said of course, then he asked me if I was going to be a writer one day. I sort of smiled at him, shrugged and told him that writing books doesn't pay a mortgage or gets me money that I can send my kids to college someday. Then he asked me if I thought that I the gift of writing. I told him I didn't know because I never really shared it with anyone.
"That's not what I asked. Do you think that you have a gift?"
"I guess I do because I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think that I was good at it.
"Then you can use the gift that God has given you. Become a teacher, wife and mother but still write and try to publish something someday. What's the worst that can happen? You get turned down by every agent and publisher in America? Big deal, you did what you loved and you tried."
This was coming from a man who never finished college and works for a construction company and has lived a very happy life. He comes to church every Sunday and tells teenagers about God in the hopes that they don't act like the reckless teenager that he once was. This was some of the best advice that I had ever received and I will never forget it. It's sad because the majority of the people in the world don't do what they really want to do. Or maybe they thought they wanted to do something and they found something else that they loved even more. What's the point of going to college for four years studying something we don't want to do and get a job in a field that we don't want? So when thinking about what you want to do forget the money. For once ask yourself the question 'what do I really want to do?' It doesn't matter that their may be thousands of other people who want to do what you want to do. If we didn't try to publish books because we didn't think that they were good enough imagine how many stories would be lost and never published? It's scary. If your scared about something you want to do that's probably a good sign. Your not scared for no reason, probably means you have created something brilliant. So I hope that I never forget what my youth leader said on a October night when I was a teenager.
DFTBA
-AB
"That's not what I asked. Do you think that you have a gift?"
"I guess I do because I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think that I was good at it.
"Then you can use the gift that God has given you. Become a teacher, wife and mother but still write and try to publish something someday. What's the worst that can happen? You get turned down by every agent and publisher in America? Big deal, you did what you loved and you tried."
This was coming from a man who never finished college and works for a construction company and has lived a very happy life. He comes to church every Sunday and tells teenagers about God in the hopes that they don't act like the reckless teenager that he once was. This was some of the best advice that I had ever received and I will never forget it. It's sad because the majority of the people in the world don't do what they really want to do. Or maybe they thought they wanted to do something and they found something else that they loved even more. What's the point of going to college for four years studying something we don't want to do and get a job in a field that we don't want? So when thinking about what you want to do forget the money. For once ask yourself the question 'what do I really want to do?' It doesn't matter that their may be thousands of other people who want to do what you want to do. If we didn't try to publish books because we didn't think that they were good enough imagine how many stories would be lost and never published? It's scary. If your scared about something you want to do that's probably a good sign. Your not scared for no reason, probably means you have created something brilliant. So I hope that I never forget what my youth leader said on a October night when I was a teenager.
DFTBA
-AB
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