ON PASSION

Some people are able to get themselves to do things solely based on the principle of insisting they should do it.

Those people aren’t me.

Part of the essence I bring into the space, and my life, is that of Passion.

I run hot and cold.

I’m not the kind of person that is reliable to exercise simply for the sake of exercising. My wife gets up every morning and gets herself on the Peloton. For her, that’s rewarding.

For me, that’s doing a thing because I’m supposed to. Sure, Peloton puts a lot of fun things on your screen to distract you and make the process easier, but it’s not fooling me.

I chase fun.

I need a game to play, and if I’m not enjoying myself, I don’t stick around with something for very long.

When I’m playing a sport that I care about, the exercise takes care of itself. I don’t have to carve out time to go and practice — I seek it out intrinsically.

The gift of Passion is that when I’m hot, I don’t have to try and find fancy workarounds to make something happen. When I’m writing about something I care about, I don’t need to set up structure or rules to ensure that I do what I say I’m going to do.

The doing is implied and inherent to Passion.

This is great when what I’m pursuing is in the hot cycle of my Passion.

But, part of the shadow of Passion is apathy.

As time goes on, it’s inevitable that my Passion will wax and wane. I cycle from hot and cold.

When my temperature cools and the initial flame of novelty has worn off, things get more challenging.

During this phase, I tend to either try and grind myself forward, ignoring how I’m feeling and aiming to force the same kind of output I can produce when I’m running hot. Or, I just shrug my shoulders and walk away.

Perhaps I’ll return when my passion is stoked again. Probably not. But maybe. But probably not.

Grinding is never a very reliable way for me to produce results. I can create from this place — it’s how I learned I needed to be, growing up, when my passion wore thin and I determined that my intuition was not to be trusted.

Grind through, force my nose to the grindstone, and get things done.

Sure, I create results, but by the end, they feel like a dinner turned to sand in my mouth. The ultimate result is pretty unrewarding, and I’m left tired, frustrated. and burnt-out.

Alternatively, I can let go of all of this, and insist that I only live my life by pursuing that which I’m hot for. If my Passion is on, then I go for it, and if not, then I turn away from it.

This works, provided that the life I’m committed to creating is determined by my mood on any particular day.

The results I’ll be capable of creating are anything achievable within the duration that my Passion lasts for. But anything that might require going through some challenge, some dips or some ennui will be out of reach.

Down this path, I found that I tended to be a Jack of all Trades, Master of None. I could pick things up and do surprisingly well with them.

My learning curve initially was quite steep. But, as things got more challenging and difficult, and the easy results started to shift into the challenging plateaus, I would get bored and then move on to the next thing.

As an example, I was reliable to write many many blog posts, but writing a whole book remained forever elusive.

These days, I’m committed to more in my life than that which meets the whims of my Passion in the moment.

And so instead, I practice generating my Passion. I set the stage for the flames of Passion to reignite, when its flames have grown cold.

I create structure that holds a space for me to sit down and do the thing I would like to bring more Passion to.

And then I practice honouring that space, and working on that thing for the time I have set aside.

I practice trusting that when the muse of Passion is ready to return, she will come back, provided I’m willing to continue setting a space for her at the table.