I went with passion. Jumped into politics as a way to change the things I saw wrong with the world. I cared a lot about social issues, poverty, anti-corruption and smart foreign policy. You name the issue and I had a passionate stance on it.

In my early career (as in, the things I did for money when I got out of school), I bounced around the campaigns of idealistic candidates who had no chance in hell of winning. Later on, I settled for the campaigns of partisan hacks that were loved by the establishment as a means of advancing my career. And that actually worked, but only to an extent. Ultimately, I got paid very little and ended up out of work for the better part of every year there wasn't an election being held.

While all this was going on, I watched the federal government grow more and more useless as the national political climate turned toxic and both sides saying no to one another and recycling the same 5 debates became the way of doing business. While that was disaffecting, I'd finally managed to break through into a well paying, rewarding career with a gubernatorial office. And it was a governor I believed in. Maybe not the most effective at times, but honest and willing to do things that needed to be done as opposed to those which pleased voters. I got emotionally invested in that office and genuinely loved the process of governing the state and the extent to which I played a part in it. As we came into reelection I worked my butt off, doing everything I could in my free time to help us clinch a victory.

Which we naturally didn't, because my good, honest horse who strove to do the right thing lost to a self funded rich guy who promised voters that he could deliver every little thing they wanted with no pain to them whatsoever. I did a lot of solid work to transition the new guy in and was promptly fired the second I became useless to him. And the state has been running into the ground ever since.

So all this is a long way of saying that I went into politics to follow my heart and only got it broken repeatedly. Now I work for non-profits and make good money doing important work. It'll never excite me like the old work did, but I was never really cut out for it in the first place. I had a messy divorce with my old career, but I managed to salvage a new one.