How to Do What You Love
Hooray for Paul Graham. Neat essays by a guy who is sometimes The Man and sometimes really arrogant. Have you also read Hackers Are Nothing Like Painters?
I just re-read How to Do What You Love and it’s pretty inspiring. Go read it… it’s not just for computer geeks like me. My big problem with the essay comes about halfway through:
Math would happen without math departments, but it is the existence of English majors, and therefore jobs teaching them, that calls into being all those thousands of dreary papers about gender and identity in the novels of Conrad. No one does that kind of thing for fun.
Bullshit. Of course people write papers for fun; it’s called structured thinking. This is akin to English majors who look at the CS majors and think, “No one writes programs for fun!” Thinking without structure (be it programs, essays, journal entries, music, discussions with friends… basically, medial expressions) is, well, wanking.
Other than that bit of anti-intellectualism, the essay is a great expression of my goal of answering the question, “And what do you do?” with a big ol’ smile.