Welcome back! I hope you are all doing well! So let me get right into it. Last week I posted about finding my passion in life. This week, I want to talk about finding YOUR passion. Interested? Come, walk with me.
So the simple answer is: you have to do things. I mean, how do you know you don’t like something if you’ve never tried it, right? If you read my last post then you will know that I tend to do a lot, like, excessively so. But it was through doing those things that I finally discovered what it is I want to do in life, what makes me happy; AND picked up the fun hobby of mead making. Now granted, I always enjoyed writing, even from a long time ago, but it was not really something I took overly serious (It shows in my high school transcripts haha) It wasn’t until I really took on the challenge of NaNoWriMo that I realized… I could do this. I was nervous and honestly thought I would fail at it. But I tried really hard and ended up winning it and blowing past the goal by several thousand words.
But before I did this I tried many other things. As I write this I am recalling when I took a Professional Cooking course in college. In the course were learned all kinds of styles of cooking; breakfast, lunch buffet, bistro, fine dining, we ran the gamut in a very intense year. Along with learning all the different styles of cooking we also had to try everything we cooked. Now, this was a long long time ago, and back then, I ABSOLUTELY hated sea food (having never really tried it). So I was dreading the seafood course I knew I would inevitably have to do. I can tell you, I still do not like escargot… but I fell in love with shrimp and calamari!
This is much the same as life. How do you know you don’t like it if you don’t try it? I hear of so many people, especially with lock downs and all the shit going on in the world, that just… don’t do anything. They have been stuck at home, eating, watching tv, and.. going insane. I could never really understand this. I WANTED to not have to go to work, all I could think of was all the things I could have done. I’m sure you’re thinking “You say that now but if you were home all the time you’d lose your motivation.” this is totally untrue, and I know it for a fact. Why? because there are so many things I want to learn, to try and do, that I was enraged and frustrated that I didn’t get the time to do more. You could even ask my kids. There were many times in frustration I said “How can you guys just play video games all the time, and complain you’re bored when there is so much you could do in the world.”
Maybe this stems from something I was told at a very young age. I forget what grade I was in, but the teacher at the time told the class, and I quote, “If you ever say you are bored, then you are the stupidest person in the world. There is so many things to learn and discover, a person should never be bored.” Now that has always stuck with me, and now that I’m older I realize more and more how true it is. There are so many things I want to try and do that I get frustrated that I don’t have the time to do them. Especially with the way cell phones and the internets are now, you can learn anything just by searching it or watching a YouTube video (That’s how I learned to completely renovate my bathroom.)
What kinds of things would I do if I had time to do them? Well, be better at posting blogs and running this website for one. But I would love to learn another language. also sign language, I always thought it would be so awesome to learn, playing an instrument is another thing I’d like to do, learning graphic designing, honestly I couldn’t list everything, mainly because there are things I haven’t even thought of that I’d want to learn. This is probably why I’m drawn to writing so much, as to make a story believable authors go through a lot of research, and I love the researching as it leads me to so many interesting things, case in point, I’m doing a deep dive into researching 16th century England. (Among other things, but I don’t want to spoil why haha)
So how to you find your passion? Simple, get out there and try things. True, you may try something that you think you are interested in and find it completely sucks. But that doesn’t mean it was a waste of time, it just means you weren’t as interested as you thought. Sometimes you have to try what may be the strangest thing but you’ll find you’ll love it. Maybe collecting stamps is something you love. At first glance you think “Yeah right.” but then once you start looking into it you find a thrill in seeking out rare stamps, and that searching and hunting is what drives you. You just never know.
And finding your passion doesn’t mean it has to be your job. Your passion is just something that you love to do, that brings you joy in this world. It could be something as simple as coloring, just something that you can go and do, and it makes you happy. My passion is writing, and yes, I would love my writing to draw in money, but truthfully, deep down, if I didn’t make any money off my writing, I’d be ok with that, because while I am writing I get to whisk myself away to other worlds, other times, and that makes me happy.
So get out there; Try new things, even if right now they seem like the craziest thing. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone, because this is for you, this is to search out things that make you happy, and being happy makes life so much more fun. I wish you all good luck in finding your happy place, your passion, whatever it may be. And as always, Stay happy, Stay healthy, and Stay magical by friends.
BradleyGosselin 