Don't you love stories that tell you to chuck it and follow your passion - success stories of all those who dared to risk everything for a momentary lapse of senses and toiled with a laser focus to follow their dream, who met with failure, rejection, hopelessness, and heartbreak but with a sudden divine wink-nudge, began to live exactly the life they wanted. I love to read those stories - because I know I will NEVER have the courage to give up my comforts for my passion.
At work, people tell me almost every day that I should be somewhere else - I should be writing they say. How romantic! How romantic to be able to live your passion - but premature cynicism makes me head first for the "fine print" in all dreams.
There really IS a lot of romanticism built around this "struggle" to pursue your passion - honestly, it doesn't appeal to me. Why, I keep asking myself, should I struggle for my passion? That in itself seems ridiculously masochistic! And what of writing itself - for its own sake and for pleasure? If I had to write to earn my livelihood, if I did this for a living, I'm certain I wouldn't enjoy it as much. When you're paid, it becomes a job, not a passion. And then, there's "passion" itself. I think you're either passionate or you're not - passion is a state of being that you acquire and you strive - very hard - to keep....every day....in everything you do. And then there's the minor detail of bombing - really royally bombing at your "passion" - THAT I think is the real fear that keeps a lot of us from pursuing our passions - it's so much easier to amuse myself with my self-injected boosts of that much maligned phrase "feel good factor" - I love what I write, I write for no one's pleasure but my own...but if I got paid, I'd BETTER write for your pleasure as well and if what I write doesn't exactly send you into raptures of ecstacy - or worse, dunks you into some serious depression - well, that might lead one to develop a brand new passion - like gambling....or alcoholism...or, horror of horrors, that last resort of every also-ran writer..memoirs.
