“You’ll never work a day in your life”

Have you ever heard that saying? There are a few versions but I’m going with “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
It has been variously attributed to Mark Twain or Confucius, but the origin is uncertain.
The basic idea being, if you love what you do, it doesn’t FEEL like WORK. George Lucas made a similar quote. It’s a bit longer but I think it eloquently sums up the idea.
“Follow your bliss. Do the thing where you sit down at 8 a.m. and then you realize you’re hungry and you look up and it’s 10 p.m. If you can find something you love that much, it doesn’t matter what you do.”
For many years of my life, I felt quite jealous of people who had found their thing. I went through life focused finding a way to get job. Enjoyment was secondary or tertiary to a steady paycheck.
I followed what I understood to be the traditional path to achieve steady employment. Working for good grades in High School. Moving on to college and then graduate school.
I thought I had found a good field for myself. Nothing that would bring wealth but something that ensure steady employment at least. It didn’t work out though.
I won’t dissect my failure in that field here.
I will tell you that when I found myself unable to find a position that matched my education, I grew desperate. I took a job just for the paycheck.
I still tried to make the best of it. I dedicated my time and attention to being the best employee I could be. I worked towards a promotion, doing things were most certainly not natural for me because that was job. Once again, I failed to achieve my goal.
I found writing fiction shortly after that failure. I’m still working on the steady paycheck part. But at least I can say, for the first time in my life, I am enjoying what I do.
Every day, I write. Some days more than others. Sometimes it’s a mental exercise as I try to work out exactly how to structure a scene or conversation. And when I hit on it, I smile. And I finally understand what it means to feel joy.