Growing up I was fortunate to be able to explore lots of different activities -- Girl Scouts, horseback riding, dancing, baton twirling, being a page in a library, seeing Broadway shows, acting, and even spending a year in Belgium. None of those activities became passions, though. They all just became a part of who I am.
Here I am decades older and still have not found that one spark that makes me ME.
I have friends with passions ranging from Disney to cosplay to history to nature to being eco-friendly to clipping coupons to librarians to biking to running to, well, you name it and someone is super passionate about it. So passionate I feel since my interest in the subject (like running, for example) is never going to be as big as theirs, it remains an interest in my life and not a passion.
Interests I do have. Let's call them different "hats" that I wear: running, writing, editing, reading, Little Free Library, traveling, history, and my family instantly come to mind. None of these interests, though, are all consuming passions. The kind that defines a person. The kind that I can turn into a thriving business.
Speaking of business, I have a number of small ones I don't know how to develop into a large profitable one. You know, the kind that involves passion. We've all seen those Venn Diagram showing the route to being financially and blissfully successful is the intersection of what you love with what the world needs with what you do well with what the world will pay for. Put it that way and it sounds so simple, right?
The business idea I have that could fit that is I want to write memoirs. Unfortunately I stink at creating a business model and am stuck in the "I think this is an awesome idea" stage and (after several years of having this idea) cannot move myself into the "finding paying customers and making it a reality" stage.
In the meantime my business hats include selling Ava Anderson Non-Toxic unsuccessfully, though my leader believes I can make this a viable business. (Make my day and click on the link and purchase something, please.) Writing stories for the local paper, but feel I spend more time tracking down payments from them than it takes to write the stories themselves. Working for a local publisher editing books and doing odd assignments, which I love, but it isn't as fulfilling as I had hoped. Substitute teaching for area librarians, but it is not the same as having my own library.
Here I sit on my sub lunch break pondering what to do to feel like a more valuable member of society. By valuable, I mean one earning a livable wage.
There we have it. A post about what I should do when I grow up as my friends who found that passion earlier in life now have over 20 years of experience in their fields and begin to dream about retirement.
Where do I go from here?
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