I came across an article where the writer concludes with the fact that passion is not enough. We need ways to monetize our passion, or else there would be no food on our table, no money to pay the bills; so on and so forth.

I agreed with the points, but it was a partial agreement. However, I didn’t want to leave a 500-word-long comment on his post, so here’s my take on the subject.

About a guy who is passionate about photography. Let’s call him John. No, not “creator passionate,” he is what I like to call a hopeless romantic when it comes to his passion.

John has double master's degrees, one of them in Geology. With those qualifications, he got a job with the Govt. of India, and a stable and hefty paycheck in his late twenties. He had around forty years of stability ahead of him, as well as a respectable position in society.

But John wasn’t happy in his job. In fact, he was quite miserable. His one true passion was photography, and John knew it. After much contemplation, he quit his job and came back to his hometown to pursue photography.

He was looked upon as a freak by people close to him. Some advised him with genuine concern. His parents wanted him to have financial stability. So John started to look for ways to monetize his passion. And this was before everyone and their grandma was a photographer on Instagram. He started doing wedding photography which was a lucrative business back then, and still is.

He made good money from it, but he was still not happy. Somehow, even with the money that flowed, he didn’t find peace. There was a restless energy about him that he couldn’t gather where it was coming from.

Anyway, John quit wedding photography and instead started taking landscape photos. No one paid for those except an occasional sale of one or two for local hospitals, and the like. He made little money, but the quality of his life started to get better. He mentored amateur photographers for a low fee and took them on photo tours. Some of them eventually became professional photographers with high pay, while he stayed in his bubble.

He eventually earned accolades in his field, he is very popular in my country as a landscape photographer. He has even won the prestigious ILPOTY award. But he still doesn’t earn that much. However, he is the happiest person I know.

I met him in his early forties, and he was my first photography mentor. We had a fallout, but I still admire his passion for photography and would tell it to anyone who listens. He once told me that he is happy with what little money he earns from mentoring and organizing photo tours. And it was a heavy downgrade from what he could have been doing with his job, or even professional photography.

Did I for once see him unhappy? No, not at least due to professional reasons. Now that’s true passion, burning within him when he takes those photos. He doesn’t care about the money.

We have mixed passion and a creator economy too much. In writing also I have seen that you are mocked nowadays if you have a romantic attachment to it. No son, you can’t have it. Look at the smart guys like us who are raking in millions, that’s what passion should be converted: into sustainable income. Learn the craft, sell courses. Means to an end. Seeing your name on a book cover is not what utopian age writers dream about. Because it is money that feeds you, not passion.

But some people are not just creators. They love their passion.

I am not like John, don’t get me wrong. And I do not think that there’s anything wrong with making money by doing what you love. (Without the mockery of the real passionates, of course.) I would love it if I make money to sustain my passion, and more wouldn’t hurt.

But some people are not just creators. They love their passion. You may call them starving artists, romantic fools, and whatnot. But these people are happy, these people have given up something for the love of a thing that’s too bright to let go. And we must appreciate them and acknowledge them as well as we hero-worship the go-getters.

Passion for passion's sake is all right. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Not all of us have to make money and sip coffee in our highrise apartments; thinking how cool we’d look on Instagram ‘now’ posing with a guitar, indulging a little in our ‘passion,’ from the safety of a job. Replace the guitar part with anything. No, we are creators who monetize one or two of our passions. I want to monetize my writing and photography until I can write without having to think about money.

But there’s another kind of passionate people. They exist among us.

Down there on the streets, roams a photographer who dreams, an artist who looks up at the sky for inspiration, a dancer who doesn’t care who’s watching. these are the passionate ones. just passion, and nothing else deters them from that. Leave them be.

This article was originally published in Medium.