Interesting blog on following your passion, and whether money will come with you.
I read "do what you love and the money will follow" many years ago. I still have a copy, not the original, which went to a friend who subsequently started a business, but a copy from a thrift store that I bought more recently. I had given the book away, along with a few similar, because I thought once I went to Law School my problems would be solved.
What I didn't realize is that once the original set of problems was taken care of, I had created another set of problems. Where I live, there's an absolute glut of attorneys. Several law schools pump out an aggregate of about a thousand each year. The vast majority of these graduates want jobs locally.
Unknown to me before law school, it's a pure numbers game. I'm one of many who was not in the top 10% of my class, took and passed the bar exam, have loans to pay and need an income. So I'm doing contract work.
There are several legal staffing agencies. Of these, I have worked for three. I think a new one starts up about every 6 mos. There are several facilities designed for document review projects, sometimes they're all full. Right now we're in a lull; I know of a few places that have continuing projects and got a call about a project starting this week. One of my friends actually got a tip from a staffer of one agency (who had no work) about a project another agency was staffing.
While the work isn't glamorous or fun, it's a paycheck. Right now, that's the important thing. Some people are remarkably positive in their outlook, others resent having to do such menial labor to make ends meet. I'm somewhere in between, but I'm on a good project and it's much easier to come to work here, in a positive environment than to some workplaces I have gone to.
I'm in a much less precarious financial situation now than I was two years ago when I started work as a contract attorney and am thankful for that. Now I need to focus on what to do with my degree. What makes sense for me? What makes use of my education? What am I passionate about? Where can I earn enough money to support myself and my student loans?
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