The least helpful advice I received from adults was to ‘do what I love’. The advice isn’t necessarily bad for everyone, but it didn’t work in my case. I really started to make progress when I treated doing what I love and how I support myself as two separate questions. The professions I gravitated toward tended not to pay well. I think the most extreme was when I tried to write poetry for a living. I started to put more time into making poetry pay than actually writing poetry. What worked better was to find a profession I didn’t hate that gave me plenty of autonomy and free time. That seemed to be the best deal I could cut. Moreover, I enjoyed what I loved more without the pressure of having it support me.

Check out other work in the Personal Ethic series here.