I have been thinking about our passions and what happens when they become work. I don’t mean when they become a job, for example, if your passion is singing and you become a professional performer, but when you love something so much you are compelled to do it every day and don’t feel right when you don’t.
My passion is writing this blog and I have made the commitment to myself to post five days a week. Because writing is a creative endeavor, an idea must present itself, followed by the thought: is this something? I can honestly say that most of the time the answer is yes, but there are days when I’ve got nothing and although I have “pledged to post”, I don’t want to put something out there just for the sake of it.
Do our passions always turn into work? Does our devotion to something make it inevitable? Think about your friends, the family you have chosen. You are no,doubt passionate about these people, but even the easiest relationships require work. Let’s say that running is your passion. You love it and like all passions, you don’t feel right, you don’t feel like yourself without it. And so you decide to take your running to a competitive level and race in a marathon. The training required is intense and relentless but you love it. But between your career and family responsibilities, there are days you want to sleep in a whole extra ten minutes or a meeting runs late and you’ve got to get your son to baseball practice. It’s work to get the miles in, its work to physically do it when the rest of your life has taken all you’ve got to give. But you love it, it’s your passion and nothing else feels right when that has gone wrong.
I think, like every story, our passions have two sides: they are both a blessing and a curse. But for every day that I rack my brain for something to write about, for every day I am a little distracted and unsettled when my husband comes home from work because I haven’t posted a blog, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. For when I press this button
all is right with my world. And if anything is going to feel like work, this should.
