But there are lots of professions that can start as teenage interest. A friend of mine was obsessed with birds, he went into nature conservation, started in a bird reserve, and has had a long career climbing the ladder in that space. And also tour-guides bird watchers.
Sure, not everything works out, but if you can turn your fun into your job, then you're one off the lucky ones.
I really wish the world economy would be structured like this, with smaller entities taking more risk and responsibilities and less enormous corporations filled with people hating their lives.
When it all goes tits-up, you just walk away. No responsibilities, no debt. Polish your resume, blame the result on "bad management" and move on to the next gig. Want to go to another country? - quit your job, and buy a ticket. No responsibilities, no debt, no nothing. Just pack your desk and walk away.
By contrast a small business employer (or a one-man-shop) doesn't get to go on vacation, answers the phone day and night, hustles each month just to keep the lights on, risks all their time and assets on uncertain outcomes. They get to work, look at the parking lot, and take on responsibility to make sure all those employees are paid at the end of the month - their families and their creditors are relying on you.
Even in the good times you're the one making decisions, deciding what risks to take, when to spend, when to save. All the while your employees tell you what you're doing wrong. And complain you're getting rich off their labor. While your bank manager refuses you a loan because you're "self employed". And you get to take personal surety for company debts and leases... Oh, and when cash is tight you're first in line to get short-paid.
Who wouldn't want to be a small business owner? It's a barrel of laughs.
That was me 100%. I passed elementary school with flying colors without ever studying anything or doing any homework or actively participating in class (I had better things do to: reading comics and building LEGO contraptions) and simply continued this approach in highschool, with much, much less success. But neither did I care nor did I have any time for studying or doing homework - I taught myself programming in Batch and BASIC in the early 90ies from the MS-DOS manpages, and later, when we had access to the internet, Delfi, Visual Basic and C++. I had finished a small tool with a few 100 users when I was 13, and I had to take care of them and fix bugs. There simply wasn't time left for any school work. University was a natural extension of this childhood interest into adulthood, and I went through it until a PhD.
But i had better things to do. I started programming in grade 7, from a book, with a Apple 2 (circa 1982). There were no forums, no Internet just me and a thin booket that came with the computer, plus later, the odd magazine.
It was never "hard", but it was fun. It taught me how to build things, how to approach problems, how to throw something away and make things better. How to imagine.
Ultimately I would study comp Sci- people would teach me the right way to program, and 40 years later it's still my career. As I predicted at the time (somewhat obnoxiously to my then teachers, sorry Mrs Hodge), I had better things to do than raise my Geography score from a C to an A.
School is important, but finding something you enjoy, where "work" feels like "fun" is the truely "gifted child".