So true! I've been saying something similar for years, ever since I realized my childhood dreams were completely impractical and I got truly sick of being poor. Now I'm following a path of where some of my natural skills coincide with potential opportunities, and I'm much more optimistic about my future and the work I'm doing today to prepare for tomorrow.

Meh, you're not going to know unless you try.

My first passion was writing and that's what I studied while in university. I majored in film and really wanted to be a screenwriter. I was lucky enough to be living in L.A. at the time and going to a school that has really good connections with Hollywood (some of my teachers were retired producers, agents, etc.) Got two internships at different studios over the course of a year and got to see firsthand what the entertainment industry is really like. And it's actually pretty shitty in a lot of ways you'd expect (i.e. a lot of people trying to fuck each other over to get ahead). I was in fact offered a job at my second internship, but said "Nope!"

I still wanted to write and do something creative and it was getting close to graduation, so I started looking into other options. That's how I found game design. There was a local game studio that was looking for someone with writing experience to help write dialog and story for games. They brought me on as a tester so I could learn the ropes (I had played games but didn't know jack about making them) and promoted me to assistant designer less than a year later.

I worked in games for several years, and in the beginning it was everything I wanted--I got to be creative every day, the people I worked with were some of the smartest and most fun people I'd ever met, and I loved people's reactions when I told them what I did for a living. But two company banckruptcies later it had lost its shine. As I approached my mid-twenties I realized I wanted a more stable job as well as a job that I could be proud of when I retired (making games is fun and all, but I wasn't under any illusion that I was making much of a positive contribution to the world).

I had been volunteering as a tutor at the local Boys and Girls clubs when the game company I was working for went bankrupt and instead of applying for another game job, I decided to become a teacher. I went back to school and got my Master's in English. And that was over 13 years ago. I'm still a full-time teacher today. I wouldn't exactly say I'm passionate about my job anymore but what I've lost in passion I've made up for with experience. I honestly can't see myself doing anything else besides teaching for the rest of my life.

My point is, don't listen to this guy. Go ahead and follow your passion. Just don't be a slave to it. Assess the risks and take them voluntarily rather than be blind-sided by them. Recognize when you're about to hit a roadblock and correct course. I realize for some people this may mean giving up on their passion and having to completely re-evaluate their life but we only learn by trying--not by giving up before we even really get started.

I followed my passion and it worked out. Grew up in a bunch of small oil towns in Canada, no where near any big cities in the 80's and 90's(oil is where most of my friends from that time ended up and look where that's gone.) I really liked to draw and had a lofty goal to work in visual effects for film, which was a VERY difficult, niche thing at the time... very unrealistic to get into. People laughed when I was getting a bachelor's degree in fine art in Uni because there was no money in it. Long story short, I'm doing quite well, have worked on many films at several companies including Pixar, and am currently working on the next Starwars at ILM. People from my childhood can't even believe it, but that's the difference between following a passion and "applying passion" to what seems a sensible, realistic choice.

Following a passion may not lead you to where you expected to go like the post above, but there is no right and wrong decisions, just choices that tell the story of your life. All you can do is negotiate the fork your currently at, with some loose idea of where you want to go and you'll go somewhere interesting. Maybe I should have been a fucking motivational speaker...

This is just a slight variation of his regular message, which does pertain to the kids of today. Mike Rowe has pushed mightily for kids to re-think the idea of 'You must go to college' because what he said is true, there are a HUGE number of skilled trade openings that no one is filling.

These trades pay a large amount of money; for instance, we recently had to pay for a skilled plumber to fix my wife's shower and with slightly less than 1 hour of labor, our bill (sans parts) was 147 dollars. They usually work on the apprentice system, so after 4-5 years you are considered a Master level if you do all the requirements. The problem is, these jobs require actual work and aren't 'sexy'. However, if you compare them to the nature of college and the white collar job market these days, you end up making a ton of money without crippling college debt. You also have a dedicated job market, something you can't guarantee with many non-science/engineering/math degrees.

It might have been better had he said, "Be aware of other options, sometimes following your dreams isn't the easiest path." For me, I got lucky and followed my dreams into a good job before I had to take disability and retire early. I was fortunate enough to have good employee-option tech stocks as well or I might be very poor today. If I had to do it again, in today's world, I might have eschewed college and went for a skilled trade.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

But Adam Ant said there's always room at the top, and that I shouldn't let them tell me that there's not.

On what @SDGundamX said, before I read his post I was going to say that passion industries are generally known for notoriously long hours, bad pay and horrible treatment. I was actually going to mention game developers (especially what I've read about crunch time before release), also chefs who often get paid less than the waiter staff, and of course most creative jobs where job insecurity and poor pay abounds.

It's simple economics. These industries know that these people are willing to put up with more to do what they love. There may not even be a conscious decision on an individual level for a given employer looking to hire, you simply know that you can find employees for X profession at X level of pay and can't really offer more if you want to stay competitive with your competitor. Meanwhile there are people streaming in who don't consider the pay or conditions beforehand and are just adding to a surplus of workers.

That's not to say that people can't be successfully, job secure or wealthy in these sectors but we know most notably from the arts that most of the money accrues to the top actors, top musicians. I do agree that when you see these people giving motivational speeches about 'never giving up' or 'always chasing their dreams', there are dozens who put in just as much effort but never got their lucky break.

The arts may be one of the worst examples, but I think this is true to a lesser extent for all 'passion' industries. It's textbook selection bias and our tendency to lionize success. On a related point, it's like how we idolize successful entrepreneurs and think their autobiographies contain the holy grail to success when perhaps the hypothetical book by a failed entrepreneur detailing their failings might actually be more beneficial to our lives.