Jason Kottke once said that The Onion is often the most emotionally honest media source we have, and that was proven once again with David Ferguson’s recent article there called Find The Thing You’re Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life:

Because when you get right down to it, everyone has dreams, and you deserve the chance—hell, you owe it to yourself—to pursue those dreams when you only have enough energy to change out of your work clothes and make yourself a half-assed dinner before passing out.

But what I really want to talk about is Kevin Fanning’s excellent follow-up post where he tries to figure out why that Onion article struck a chord with so many people:

I think the reason this article is painful is because culturally we define success in such a weird and outdated way. There’s this idea that if you’re not doing what you’re most passionate about all the time, you’re a failure. If you aren’t making a living at it, you’re a failure. If you’re not Stephen King or Christina Aguilera, you’re a failure.

Kevin’s conclusion (among other things, that “maybe eventually we get to a place where we see that books and music and art are created by us, people who have school and day jobs and other shit we care about”) is a call to relax a bit, and be much less hard on ourselves. Read it and feel better!