I recently read a fabulous blog by a writer named Mark Manson, who said that the secret to finding your purpose in life is to answer this question in total honesty: "What's your favorite flavor of shit sandwich?"
What Manson means is that every single pursuit--no matter how wonderful and exciting and glamorous it may initially seem--comes with its own brand of shit sandwich, its own lousy side effects. As Manson writes with profound wisdom, "Everything sucks, some of the time." You just have to decide what sort of suckage you're willing to deal with. So the question is not so much "What are you passionate about?" The question is "What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?"
--in Big Magic (2015)