<p>let me be the first here to say to you: congratulations! you have cleverly avoided wasting at least a decade of your early worklife pursuing your “passion” as a career. you could easily have spent the better part of your 20s and even some of your 30s working your heart out at something or other that seemed…well, not like work at all but, fun even. only to find somewhere down the road that the reason you still can barely pay your rent is that so many others want to do the same kind of thing almost for free (think of it as a kind of professional internship). so i suggest you can herewith eliminate the following not-supportive passions: writer, actor, winemaker, musician, free-lance anything, jewelry/clothing/interior/what-have-you designer, etc etc etc. i’ve always said that if someone is occupied in a particular enterprise that makes for a good personality profile in that little supplement magazine that comes with your sunday newspaper, then it’s very likely a lousy way to make a living. so what can you do? one kind of work nobody ever mentions here (odd, this omission) is sales. i don’t mean retail or real estate or cars or door-to-door magazines, but the kind of thing that makes any industrial business go 'round. pick your industry or product, identify the growth leaders, and start dialing-for-dollars. you work on your own, sometimes remote from the home office, and travel is usually part of the job description. passion? you can pursue that too - think “hobby”.</p>