"Only privileged assholes think you can just drop all your shit and 'follow your dreams'~"

Funny how people still peddle that whole "you gotta pursue your dreams!" bullshit, but when you do exactly that and you fail, you hear from the same assholes, "Serves you right for pursuing the arts!" (or whatever category, but let's face it, it's usually something in the arts).

Back when I was still using Tumblr, this massively stupid post showed up in my dashboard. I was glad, however, to see the many comments debunking this bullshit, which I’d like to share below in further hopes of convincing young kids to be smart and NOT do as the dumb GIF set says. Anyone who says "you don't need money to be happy" is clearly one who is not currently in need of money. 

[Also interesting that one commenter points out the figure $75,000 as being the wage you need to live comfortably here. I can attest to this as that’s exactly what my salary range was from 2008 to 2012, when for the first time I was "comfortable” as a member of the middle class; I was able to pay my bills easily each month, no longer carried a credit card balance, quickly paid off my car loan and accrued a savings account with enough cash in it to carry me through two years of unemployment.]

People from middle and upper middle class can say these things and get away. People who don’t know what starting capital is can say these things. People who literally don’t know what its like to have nothing or to live in poverty can say these things. You can’t follow your dreams without some start up cash from somewhere. And most people don’t have that. Like if money was no object and people could just ~live their dreams~ then why are there children starving in 1st world nations

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It’s the social economic version of “just stop being depressed”

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“All you need is a house and food and a laptop”. And internet for the laptop. And electricity. And plumbing. And heat. And possibly has for your car. Oh and tabs and emissions if you have a car. Travel if you live away from family/friends or have a job that requires it but doesn’t pay for it. And, hm, what else? Oh yeah! Medications. Doctor appointments. Replacement for things like canes and wheelchairs if they break and your insurance doesn’t cover it (oh, and if you’re self employed, you have to pay for insurance, too).

Not only is this super classist, it’s ableist as fuck.

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It has been economically and psychologically studied that unless you make 75000 dollars a year, you're not happy. That's the amount of money every year that you need to be really happy. So no, saying “following your dreams” doesn't cut it. my dad grew up in poverty and had to work his entire damn life doing shit he didn't want to do, and now hes like 53 and he's FINALLY happy because he's making money. He had to give up his dreams in order to get out of poverty. So YEAH, money doesn't buy you happiness, but unless you make 75000 a year then you're not totally safe.

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“own a yarn shop” - Wow, yeah, ‘let them eat cake’ much?
And just supposing it’s that easy, this is forgetting the huge amount of time work it takes to start and run a business; it’s not like entrepreneurialism is something you do on the side in between your knitting. And okay, let me explain why people are tempted to try and gain “worthless scraps of paper”: GOODS AND SERVICES

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Only privileged assholes think you can just drop all your shit and ~*follow your dreams*~. The rest of us have to shovel our way up from the fucking bottom just to dream of seeing sunlight one day.

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Something I’ve always hated about this mentality (aside from the money/privilege aspects already mentioned) is that it totally disregards the fact that you need to have some bare minimum of talent in order to be successful, even if it is something you are wildly passionate about. Given the chance, I would spend every day of the rest of my life creating dance. I love to dance, and anyone who has seen me perform can tell you I’m actually not bad. I am passionate about it, I am a pretty good actor, I can choreograph and rehearse a pretty decent contemporary number in roughly 8 hours. I love to dance.

But I probably never will make my living off of it. My body isn’t built to be a professional dancer; I’ve got shorter legs than torso, I am short, and some of my musculature is just flat out biologically non-conducive to dance. I don’t jump high enough, land soft enough, or turn fast enough to ever do it professionally.
The dance world is HIGHLY competitive already, and that is without the sudden influx of people we’d be warring against if everyone started following the “just do what you love” mentality that is being espoused above. Even as a boy I would have to fight tooth and nail to be recognized in my field with the meager talent I have now.

It seems condescending when talented artists make these cute little comic strips that showcase their considerable skills in visual art, and then tell people “just follow your passions! I did! Look how happy and fulfilled I am!” without ever touching on the fact that they themselves are obviously TALENTED ARTISTS!
And “getting creative” still requires that you have some kind of skill related to your passion. On Tabatha Takes Over s5ep9, you see a perfect example of this “do what you love” crap not panning out at all. A woman quits her job and opens a manicure salon. The problem being that she doesn’t actually know anything about aesthetics or how to run a salon. She opened it because she had the money, and she loved getting manicures. (This is a theme that comes up over and over again on Tabatha’s show; “you wanted free manicures so you opened a salon.” “You really like fro-yo, so you opened a restaurant.”) Beyond that, you can see more examples of people “just following their passions” when the salon technicians don’t actually know what they are doing. The owner’s “passion path” has now made it possible to set more people on their “passion path”, without the necessary training. It’s the blind leading the blind. The owner has no idea what she’s doing, so she has no idea what to ask from her staff, so those girls who are following their passions think that this is how you succeed in this field and all they’ve done is followed their passions straight down a path into a failing business.

“You like knitting? Open a yarn shop!"….. do you know anything about accounting? Customer service? Overhead? Suppliers and contracts? The legalities of having employees? How to schedule or do payroll? Every aspect of a field requires a certain skill set, and while it is great to follow a passion, it needs to be a passion that you can market well, or tailor to your skills. If you don’t have the talent necessary to succeed in a field, then you very well may not succeed.

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One more comment from me here...I'm a passionate knitter, been knitting for 40 years. Spent loads of my middle class money on yarn from a certain seller in Turkey. I can assure you there is NO money to be made in opening a yarn shop.