Making Passion Pay

Life is short, and the older we get the faster it flies by. We spend so many of our waking hours on the job that it's awful to think that those hours are wasted doing something that doesn't light our passions.

I'm still looking for the perfect career, despite having a job I truly enjoy. The only part of my job that doesn't quite fit my ultimate goals is lack of control. I don't necessarily need to be in charge, but I do feel like without having creative control over projects I'm left only half satisfied with my work.

My question, then, is how to obtain creative control of a project. I don't see it happening in my current role or company, though I'm learning a lot which will hopefully help me move on to such a position at some point. I'm not ready to jump ship at all, I think I'm in a good spot. But lingering in the back of my mind, I'm always asking "what's next?"

Getting older, I am now looking at wanting to have children in the next 10 years, which completely messes with my career path. I know I need to have everything in order careerwise before I have kids. That means I need to be at the point in my career where I know what job I want to do and I can successfully freelance / run my own business consulting if I so chose so I can spend time with my hypothetical children.

Or, I don't have kids, and I have a lot longer to figure things out, and a lot less money I need to make. But I think I want kids... otherwise I'll just get too depressed. Life is meaningless anyway, but at least children make it a little bit more meaningful.

Then again, I could find a truly rewarding job where my creative ideas are turned into products that help people. That would be ideal. I'm enjoying some courses I'm taking at a local community college in areas I never had the courage to study in college, such as computer programming. It's still very hard, but it makes me wonder if I missed out on the opportunity to be in creative charge of my work without having to be an extrovert (ie - be a programmer.) I don't think that will ever happen, but perhaps the computer science area is one that has room for me, somewhere. I just need to figure out where, and how on earth to get there.

I do know that I feel happiest when I'm collaborating and brainstorming new ideas and layouts for user interaction. Now, that's my passion for sure. But how do I go from passion to career? And does career always kill passion? Or can it kindle it further?