They say to do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but how many people do you know who are doing that? Furthermore, how many people do you know who are doing what they love and managing to support themselves?

When I graduated college, myself and everybody I knew had a dream of what they wanted to do and how they wanted to change the world, but once we entered the misery and mediocrity of The Real World, we discovered that you can’t always earn a living doing what you love. Especially with friends who were musicians or artists, finding a way to support yourself was next to impossible. Even friends who studied psychology or political science and wanted to make a difference in the world, ended up settling for clerical. Poems and watercolor paintings were in no way going to pay for an apartment, fix your car when it broke down, pay off $500 worth of student loans every month, or even feed yourself. Money can’t buy happiness, but if you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you need to have shelter, food, and warmth before you can think about things like recognition or self-actualization.

I think one of the problems is that people kept telling me to pursue and study what I love and convinced me that the money would come later. I can’t fault them because their hearts were in the right place, but instead of learning about Dada sculpture in Berlin I wish I had been learned how to finance my goals and market myself for a job. I graduated with virtually no skills. I thought I would work at a publishing company or magazine upon graduation, but those places have been drying up and shutting down everywhere and I didn’t have the resources to go to New York or L.A. I did an internship for a while but it cost me $22 riding the bus there and back every day I went into the city. Bills started coming in, I needed a vehicle, and needed to start paying health insurance, so I took any job I could find.

I was working at a pizza place with a 16-year-old as my supervisor. He already had a child and was amazed when he found out I’d graduated college. He wanted to know what I was doing there. I wrote a few short stories in the meantime and tried to assemble of a painting and photography portfolio, but I was always too tired from work to do anything creative. At one point, I was working 50 hours a week at two minimal-wage jobs and I don’t think I got a single drawing done in those five months. I burned through my savings and spent my savings bonds on gas and college loans all while trying to enter work into galleries or submit a story to a magazine. Before I knew it, four years had gone by with nothing to show for it.

Of course, the job market sucks and will continue to suck for a long time, but there were times I felt like a complete failure. I had put my ambitions on the back burner just to settle for living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to get by. The universe isn’t picking solely on me, obviously. Most of my friends are living with their parents trying to find a job in their field and working dead-end jobs to make ends meet. Several friends of mine have biology degrees and have taken several jobs counting birds and collecting fox droppings, but they only last a few months and half of them don’t pay. They’re just looking for experience right now.

There are of course people who are doing what they love and making a living off it, but it’s very rare. You either have to be in the right place at the right time and have an absurd amount of talent (a rock star, I guess) or you have to drastically lower your standards. There are people who just hitchhike across the country taking photos or start a garage band and play at local bars. They’re not making much money but they’d do this over working in a cubicle any day.

However, not only am I deep in debt, I want some standard of living. I don’t want to end up writing poetry in a van and sharing a can of beans with five people I don’t know. I’m certainly not greedy, but I want a place of my own one day, I want a car that’s not constantly breaking down, I want to find that special someone and to be able to provide for them. I don’t think that’s much to ask for, but it seems like I can’t achieve that and do what I love at the same time.

Ultimately, I just have to keep doing what I’ve been doing for four years: keep an eye out for a good-paying job and just pursue my passion on my own time. It’s a sad idea compromising your dream, but if you want to survive, it seems like that’s just what you have to do.