Have you found your life’s passion?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I found my passion in a rather roundabout way.

I decided at a very young age that I never wanted a 9-5 desk job, ever. It seemed like the most boring thing to me, and I always heard adults complaining about their jobs, and it never seemed worth it to me. Spending 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year doing something you hated, just because it paid the bills? Not worth it. I’d rather do something I loved, even if money was tight.

So I had romantic visions of life as a starving artist, selling paintings and writing to survive. I was published 5 times in my local paper before the age of 12. I loved art class, and though I stopped drawing as much as I used to when I got into high school, I nevertheless felt that I had enough natural talent to make a career out of it. So I started going to college for graphic design.

Halfway through my second year, I realized that a graphic designer still had that same old 9-5 desk job, and their creativity was limited too. So I switched my major to English. That didn’t last long, either, because I realized that my lifelong concern about the education system and desire to reform it was probably a better course of action… So, I became an education major.

About that same time, I finally noticed my obsession with history. My dad is a history buff as well, and is writing a book on WWII, always watches the History Channel, etc. It never seemed unusual until I realized that most people aren’t like that. They find history boring. So I wanted to teach history. I wanted others to understand the importance of it, and instill an appreciation for history in my students. But why bother majoring in education, when I could major in history and get certified later? So, finally, I chose my major and stuck with it.

I’m a senior in college now, and will be applying to grad school soon. I am specializing in medieval European history. My chosen field has enough flexibility for me, so I see my career as mainly focused on research and writing, probably with a college professorship to pay the bills. And I also got a job at the local Holocaust Museum, which gave me even more options. I ended up leaving due to annoyance over mismanagement and blatant favoratism, but made good contacts and will probably get an internship at the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. soon. Now my only fear is that I will switch to Holocaust and Genocide Studies, pushing back graduation even further.

So, I finally realized that I just needed a career that allows for flexibility, creativity, and the feeling that I am doing something to promote education and the greater good. Another of my passions is language, which ties in nicely with the history. Medieval Europe means not a lot of English, so I continued taking French in college and will probably study Latin as well. It’s a good thing, too, because I discovered recently that the grad schools I will probably apply to require applicants to demonstrate fluency in a foreign language.

I haven’t completely deserted my art, but now see it as a hobby that is a good stress reliever rather than a potential source of income.

22

“Music” - truly in the all-encompassing sense. I spend all day listening to music, reading about music, playing instruments, recording my own and others’ music using studio equipment, writing songs, and constantly trying to expand my musical knowledge. I gig and record with four different bands, one of which is signed to a well-known label and goes on tours across the country. The vast majority of my spare money goes toward music equipment, instruments, and maintenance on the afreomentioned. I’m constantly finding new music in all directions in time, from stuff coming out next week to stuff from the 17th century and everything in between.

23

I was like Grandma Moses, painting scenes for my own winter entertainment, and selling them at our fruit stand. Then a dealer from the city decided I had enough for a “mini show”, where a dozen appeared in her window, with a line in the Sunday Events column in the paper. When they sold a couple, a company wanted several for their sales room, and now it’s not a hobby but a business.

24

That is gorgeous! How long did it take to knit?

To answer the OP, I don’t have a passion. I would be satisfied with a career that I don’t hate going to 5 days a week and paid well enough so that I could live a decent lifestyle (decent being can pay bills and have some leftover for savings and vacations). I wish I did so that I could have something to strive for, even if it was just a hobby.

25

Frequency control devices; loved every minute of every day.

26

Took me till my late 30’s to discover programming.

I was in retail, which I wasn’t crazy about, but was good at. My store started selling computers, so I bought one - frankly, for games. It had Basic on it, so I started messing around, trying, of course, to write a game. I was entranced and delighted by the style of thought required. “Frank,” I thought, “this is so cool! I wonder if I could make a living doing this?”

I discovered that, yes, I could make a living at it. Went to school long enough to learn some structured programming and some COBOL, and 15 years later I’m still entranced and delighted. Sadly, school districts seem to be far more interested in accounting and payroll systems than they are in games, but I live in hope.

27

When I was in high school, I really got interested in advertising and decided it was what I wanted to do with my life. No one seemed to know how I should go about becoming an art director.

I went to art school and didn’t get what I wanted out of it, and kind of dismissed the advertising thing. I went on to a big university and got degrees in art history and anthropology. I got a job in marketing. I was unsatisfied. My employer was big on professional development, so I took some classes in stuff that interested me. In the ad copywriting class I got lots of compliments on how good I was at it. I thought I wanted to maybe be a graphic designer and started looking for more classes in that.

Then I started seeing ads for a place that called itself a portfolio school. I went and checked it out and discovered that it was an advertising school. And everything clicked into place–this is what I had wanted to do since I was 16, and it’s what I’m really good at.

I ended up quitting my job so I could work full time at the school while taking classes there, and I finally, finally have a job that I love.

I’m 36. It’s entirely possible to discover your life’s passion and pursue it even once you’ve headed down the wrong path. It’s never too late.

28

Never got to really persue my passion, so now I settle on the drink. And I started playing drums again, badly. While drinking.

29

I have always had a need to make things, to put things together. I knew that there existed people called “artists” but I had no idea how one got to be one. I just assumed that if you WERE an artist, that would be blindingly obvious, and you’d just pursue your art and some magical process would occur by which you’d make a living at it. I was very much encouraged to find a “real” job, which I did.

I was an excellent waitress, a pretty good bartender and eventually dabbled in actual restaurant management. I enjoyed the work, but hated the petty politics of the industry. I continued to do assorted handcrafts, mostly oriented around jewelry-making, but also some fiber crafts. I wanted to try to make my own beads, because I had an idea of what I wanted and couldn’t find pre-made beads that would work. I bought a couple packages of polymer clay on a whim, sat down at my kitchen table and literally did not get up from the table for eight hours. Over the next year, I took every polymer clay class I could find, bought every book or magazine that had a polymer clay project in it, spent countless hours on AOL crafting bulletin boards, published my first project and sold my beads to several area bead stores.

I started working with polymer clay 14 years ago and still look forward to sitting down in my studio every day. I’m not QUITE able to support myself on it, but now that is largely due to my own perfectionism and self-imposed limits.

30

I found mind kind of the hard bite-me-in-the-ass way. I went off to college to get an electrical/computer engineering degree, decided I’d rather go for math. Got 2.5 years into my math degree, and then kinda burned out. Like, really bad burnout. I had run myself into the ground so deeply that it was drop out and maintain the option of going back and re-getting my scholarship for the math program, or failing and being kicked out.

I dropped out, moved to Orlando, and a friend of mine hooked me up with a job doing website design. Somewhere in the first year of college I started drawing in the margins and doing all the website layouts for the homework assignments for half the folks on campus (it seemed) for piddling amounts. I spent all my time in class decorating my notes and notebooks and papers instead of taking notes, and all my time out of class sleeping or drawing.

Somehow this wound up with me being a graphic designer, and here, ten years later, I’m looking at corporate artist jobs because business is just too slow to maintain it on my own without the ability to advertise.

I’m very happy doing what I do. :slight_smile:

31

Music is still my passion, though I have had a love-hate relationship with it. I’ve toyed with going for other career options but I have this feeling that music will be what I do for the rest of my life. Right now all I want to do is play my trumpet, but I live in an apartment and I can’t do it here.

32

I’m not sure what specifically my passion is, but I know it will involve: A) Japanese language/culture and B) helping people in some form or another

I never had an epiphany or anything, but I am pretty introspective and this observation has held true for my years in college so far.

33

I love golf. I am not a great golfer, but I love everything there is about golf. I love the camaraderie, the connection with nature, the game itself, the obligatory couple of beers after, and the exercise.

It’s a game I can play, ostensibly, till I’m 80.

All other things aside, I would say this is my passion. Unfortunately I am a father with two young kids and golf is a distraction I can only participate in a dozen or so times a year.

34

Yes. Ferret legging.

35

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. When I was wee, I used to draw pictures of doctors and nurses because they had what seemed to me a sort of tangible occupation - you did this. (My dad was in computers at the time and his job was hard for me to grasp.) I also was obsessed with Egypt, and read everything I could get on the subject.

Then I gave medicine and archaeology up, didn’t think about it. I thought math was kind of hard, I got good grades, got chatted up by a lot of nice colleges in high school. Ended up going to a private women’s college on the east coast.

Then I did a lot of drugs. A lot of them. Not even the sorts of drugs you’d associate with college students being silly. Serious drugs.

And then I had to recover from that time. And I did it. I worked.

And one day it hit me…yeah, I think I’d like to be a doctor - a physician. I have a unique perspective on humanity, and also some crazy smarts. It was almost literally a bolt from above - I didn’t think about it or decide. I’ve thought about it since - I’m still kind of trying to decide whether I want to go for the actual MD or for physician’s assistant (which in this state is pretty similar).

And the Egypt thing - I took courses in Arabic and Middle Eastern subjects when I was in college before, so I may be in the unique (and possibly enviable) position of applying for medical school with all the prereqs and a major in Near Eastern studies.

Now I read books about doctors. I went to the Foundling Museum and the Hunterian Museum in London. I read their stories. I watch the doctors at the hospital I work at. I talk, and I listen.

(Of course, I also read Pratchett, so I’m not totally obsessed.)

I’m 30 now, which means I’ll be hitting residency really late. I don’t know if it will work out for me. But I have to try. Hell, I’ll be the same age anyway.

(Biology - mine - is a bitch though. Do I wanna have a baby?)

36

Mine is China. Not sure why. grew up in Norcal so there were some asians. Did 4 years of Kenpo karate. At University, I had to take a language and thought what the hell, I’ll take Mandarin Chinese. I didn’t know how to learn languages and it was by far the toughest thing I ever did. Then I went to Taiwan for a year about 25 years ago, and figured out I really thrived on being a foreigner in a Chinese environment. I’ve gone on to write a guidebook on China, lived in Taiwan, HK and China for 20 years, have a chinese wife, kids that speak Mandarin as a first language, and a cool job interfacing between a big American corporate, big foreign corporates and reality of business in China.

25 years later and I still enjoy going exploring around China. I like hanging out with my “homies” even if they are peasants in a bumfuck little shithole in the godawful middle of nowhere. And I get paid to do this. :cool:

37

I find a new life’s passion every two weeks.

38

:eek:

:smiley:

My life passion (women aside) would oddly be making other people happy. For the most part the only way to enjoy myself is vicariously, so in a sense I guess it does make sense.

Since I was young I’ve liked masks and stories, Cirque du Soleil. Anything related to the Comedia del Arte just makes me feel good. I would like to write some movies that used traditional clown characters, modernized, some day.

For the most part, though, I’m not trying to divert my life on this path. I have too many other interests, though I always think in terms that I am trying to make stuff that will be useful to people even if it isn’t something necessarily fun. And becoming a clown seems like it would be a bit of a waste of what I’m capable of. I do have a good collection of masks though, and I’m good at trying to watch out for and help my friends. I also always like teaching.

39

Y’know I could have sworn you were more of a goat felcher. :smiley:

Anyways, my passion (sort of) is building and flying model aircraft.

Some are kit bought but I have designed some of my own which flew…after a fashion :dubious:

My other passion is of course Manchester City FC

40

Making things. Specifically sewing/beading/jewellery/anything fibre related/cooking. I reinvented the spindle in grade eight. I was turning kleenex into thread in grade school. I made a loom in grade nine, spun fibre out of a pillow, and wove a hanging for an art project. I had an impressive doll clothes collection. I found out I could cook in little tiny aluminum foil containers on top of my lamp at about eight.

I also love reading with absolute passion. If I’m not doing some of both every day I get very twitchy, and then sulky.