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Tell me about yourself.
I'm suddenly struck with the desire to know how other people do the things that matter most to them, how they find and follow their passions.
How do you decide where your heart is? How do you carve out time and energy to pursue it?
Are you on a new road or one you've been following for a long time? What have you learned that could help others? What false starts have you made, what poor judgments? What have you compromised, and what do those compromises look like to you now?
How do you decide where your heart is? How do you carve out time and energy to pursue it?
Are you on a new road or one you've been following for a long time? What have you learned that could help others? What false starts have you made, what poor judgments? What have you compromised, and what do those compromises look like to you now?
no subject
isn't it interesting that many people first think of their day jobs when you ask this kind of question? I think getting food on the table isn't necessarily the same thing as "your passion", although it can be. (sometimes nobody will pay for your passion, so you do what you can)
That said, I'm working at something I always dreamed of doing, and have been happily doing so for almost a decade. How did I get there? being flexible and willing to change. taking risks. being willing to do something new. being willing to do something I majorly disliked (but didn't out-and-out *hate*) for a while because it got me the chance to do something else I loved. saying "what the heck?" and putting in a resume when a friend told me about a place where "you'd be perfect for the job, but some of the other people who work there are really unpleasant and I don't know if you'd like it" (I adore the job, and the unpleasant people were perfectly civil to *me* and left soon afterwards anyway) ....hmmm...I think I've made most of my life decisions that have been most rewarding and valuable by saying "what the heck?" and just trying something....
other things I've learned:
--if you can't do exactly what you want right away, why not try to do as much of it as you can now, even if it's a little bit? that way you don't get stuck waiting for "the perfect opportunity"
--always ask for what you want. the worst they can say is "no" (and you've already said that to yourself by not asking...)
--there is no such thing as "no" -- there is "not now", "not under these circumstances", "not this way", "not with you", and "not unless X"....if you change the parameters, you may be able to change the answer from "no"....
--more money does not always equal a better situation. the intangibles matter
--everything changes. Like other folks said, what may be your passion today may not be your passion ten years from now.
hmmm....you said you wanted to know how other people follow their passions & I haven't been very personal. okay, I got into dog training because the Spouse & I promised ourselves a dog as soon as we moved to a house with a yard. a week after the move, we went down to the local SPCA and picked up a little mutt who became the apple of our eyes. We saw a notice in the paper for a local "doggie festival" (an "in the park" event for people & their dogs), said "what the heck?" and decided to take our baby. There, we saw an obedience demo put on by the local dog club. We ended up joining the club, taking a class, and then, because it looked fun, volunteering to help when the instructors taught classes. We made a lot of friends. I got into reading and email lists about dog behavior, went to bunches of seminars, joined accreditation programs, volunteered to assist teaching bunches of more classes, and eventually taught some classes of my own. I've made friends all over the country, had scads of adventures, and changed a lot of lives for the better, one doggie and its family at a time. (Our little mutt-princess? We got into pet therapy with her and visited nursing homes and disabled children's facilities and got to watch her bring joy and happiness to tons of people, all by wagging her tail a whole lot.) Have I made money at this? Nah! But my heart's been happy, my life has been full of dogs, and I still have students who email me their Santa Paws photos.
what's your passion??
no subject
I love your list of things you've learned, especially the idea that you've already said "no" to yourself if you decide not to ask. I'm much hampered by fear of rejection, and need to take that to heart.
Right now I'm really fiction-focused, but I can already see that just writing, with no other job, isn't going to work for me in the long term -- everything's going out of my brain and nothing new is coming in. (Also it's a problem financially, of course.) So I want to find a job2, something to finance the writing, get me out of the house, and allow me to -- I don't know. To organize something. I love to organize things.
no subject
I was always very shy, and that's something my dad would always tell me as he prodded me to "go ask already!"
Thinking on that, a corollary: something useful to me has been doing things that I wasn't initially comfortable doing, in order to stretch my comfort zone. I was always shy, and hated dealing with strangers, so the dog training was good in that it put me in contact with lots of strangers, and in fact I had to stand in front of a roomful of strangers and their barking dogs and actually have them all look at me as I demonstrated something. Now, talking in front of groups of strangers is no big deal. Mind, I still don't enjoy it, but I can do it.
Getting to the point of being able to do it was something I learned through dog training: you pair something you really, really like with something you don't enjoy--in such a way that, in order to get to the good stuff, you have to plow through the unpleasant stuff. For me, that meant getting to work with dogs was a reward for public speaking. Every time I talked to a stranger, I got to pet their doggie. I found out that "hey, this isn't so bad. I can do this!"
For you, I imagine, writing (and posting fanfic has been a way to stretch your comfort zone over your fear of rejection. Has it?
It might be fun to see if you can get a job(2) that will use a second set of your skills and that will stretch you a little bit. Make it challenging for yourself! I bet you can do lots of things really well.