I've been now around 2 months and a half working, handling requests and preparing deliveries pretty much every week: doing “useful” stuff.
Although the first question is: what's the meaning of “useful”. For me there's quite a few valuable professions, e.g. doctors, taxi drivers, farmers and fishermen, waiters. Not me. Even scientists give a more real fruit to society, compared to mine.
I'm being paid, that's true. But I'd rather be doing something for the nadaist cause, I'd be devoted to meaningless investigations and the like.
It's all a matter of time, isn't it? It's the practical problem to deal with: when you're working you don't find free time for whatever you like, when you're not working you want to spend your time on amusing stuff, something exciting and different, or perhaps you'd just like to repeat those very nice things you enjoyed so much in the past.
Psychological time actually becomes a bigger problem: you don't want to feel that you're wasting your time - particularly when you're about to die (I've never understood why exactly there's a relation between having a good time and a kind of examination you're supposed to pass before your death?) Anyway, it's even worse, it's a mystical or religious problem, since your time is limited and in consequence there's some questions without answer you may dare to ask about waiting for an answer.
Obviously everything, literally everything in a human mind, it's all about time.
And then, there's this guy I happened to meet, a writer who lives (starves) from his writing. It seemed he wanted to help me but he had enough of his own, anyhow there's a lot of courage he gave me, and something he told me I found very beautiful: “in literature there's no wasted time”. Even if you throw it away when you're finished, next time you try to write it, it will be better. Next thing you try to write, it will only become better.
I think he's right, and for sure it does not only apply to literature. A colleague at work told me that he feels the more or less the same about programming in Java. No doubt, if that's ok for him. Other people raise children.
The point is: you have your personal definition of your activity for which there's no wasted time, then you should just focus on it and not spend much time on anything else. If that activity becomes your job, then you'll get paid for it. If not, you'll have to sacrifice time for whatever useful you are able to do and entitles you to a salary, and the rest of your time will be devoted to the pointless.
And the point for you will be on the pointless, of course.
