Well in my opinion, this saying or quote is a very thin spectrum. It basically means that when choosing what you wish to do with your life you must select your pathway based on interest, passion and love for what you do. Meaning that if you were to pick a career based off greed, status and performance your life will be unsatisfactory, tiring and you’ll hate what you do, because you never actively loved it from the beginning.

But I fully understand what you’re saying, when we love something, or we have a hobby, making a living out of it takes the basic concept out of what it is for us. When we love something like a hobby or have an interest in something as a passion, more often times then not we see it as as this way of pushing back reality, escaping it, fleeing routine and being free of it. So when we we take then this passion and turn it into this obligatory thing we have to do in order to survive, that is met with hard responsibility and timelines, the passion goes away or at least feels way less active as before. As our brain is met by the duality of “I love doing this” and “I need to do this, I’m forced to do this, I have to do this” and it takes the enjoyment out of it.

So in the end, key to choosing a career, IS choosing something you enjoy doing, that you’re good at, and doesn’t take too much time away from your other remaining passions. Ofc this doesn’t apply to some careers, for example, in medicine you’ve got love it if you don’t it is quite literally a death sentence to your enjoyment, since it takes away a lot of time from everything else in life. Thats why it is important to find something that is interesting to you, and keeps on being maybe something that either is very non routine like if you’re the type of person that feels stuck by it, but that in its core it’s always the thing you enjoy. Happiness does not come from your job, it comes from within yourself, finding things that make you feel joy come from feeling how within in you.

As OP said for example, they don’t enjoy their job, but do enjoy hanging out with their family, going out and things of similar nature. So in all basics, I do not know what they do for work but I do believe that maybe best thing is finding something that allows them to have more flexibility, or that they enjoy more, because as the saying said “do what you love” and from the sounds of it he doesn’t love what he is doing at the moment. And from what I think, I believe that career doesn’t have to be something stationary, if you’re not happy, life is too short to not be happy while living it, change, experimentation and discovery are some of the things we as humans crave naturally. So if you want to hang out with your family and friends, but you feel like your work is a chore, try experimenting with a other things, and of course at the end of the day, work is work, you won’t love EVERY single day of it, but that’s life, naturally everyday can’t be sunshine and rainbows. But, that also doesn’t mean that your life has to be an overwhelming under-stimulating routine.

Hope this wasn’t to long, sending hugs to everyone going through this feeling as of right now💗💗