I just finished reading Crush it, now it’s time to cash it on your passion from Gary Vaynerchuk and it kept me up at night. So many ideas, so many conflicts were going through my head… I just could not sleep.
I am a long time fan of Gary Vee and I enjoy his straightforward way to speak his mind. Basically, his new book is about living your passion to the max and eventually making a living out of it. The book is loaded with great insight, great advices, great tips. However, while I was up at night thinking about how I can apply all of this to little old me (he, I want to crush it too!!!), my main road block was to identify my passion. Not that I have none. On the contrary, I have too many…
I think the world is divided roughly into 3 groups:
1- Those who have passion for nothing. They are living an ordinary life and are happy with it. They grow up, go to school, get married, get a job, buy a house in the suburbs, raise their offsprings, watch TV and then die content with their life.
2- Those who have one passion. They discovered it early on and never looked elsewhere. They live and breathe that calling. This is pretty much simple to manage. Anything they do, read, talk about is related to their passion. They are known as the wine guy, the queen of clean or the adventure girl. Those are the crush it people.
3- And then, they are those who have multiple passions. This one is more complicated.
I did some research to try to understand the phenomena. As I place myself in this category, I wanted to know if something’s wrong with me. Maybe I have ADD or something?
A while back, I was already wondering if my blog had ADD and here I go again with the same old questions. Ummm… strange coincidence… so, I really had go to deeper into the subject.
I found out that these people are voracious learners. They are able to converse knowledgeably about several topics. But they are also constantly living in the guilt that there is never enough time to truly accomplish or master their passions.
Someone told me that whatever I focus on expands. Yes, but I am not able to focus only on one things. Am I going to be able to expand several things? Arrghh!!!! Going deeper into my research, I found out that it’s a known phenomena (ouff! I am as normal as I can be!). There is no need to feel guilty about neglecting one of your passions because if you are commited to it, it’s not going anywhere. At some point. you will return to it with a fresh perpective.
I am now convinced that having multiple passions is not like having multiple personalities. It is a perfectly acceptable path and that I am not doomed with a life of frustrations. I think it would be a much bigger frustration to have to give up on some of my passions/interests to keep only one. Life is long enough. I have time to explore them all and discover new ones.
As an artist, it could be easy to say that my passion is to create art and that the rest is just source of inspiration.
But in my situation, I see it in reverse. I have passions that I need to express and share though my art.
At first glance, it sounds like the same things. But for me it is not. How do I know that?
Put me in a room with people talking about art, glass, jewelry. I have nothing to say or share and there is not much they can say that speaks to me. But put me in a room full of shooting sports enthusiasts, scuba divers or UFO buffs, and I have a blast.
Give me a booth in a traditional art show and I get skunked. But give me a booth at a dive show, UFO convention or NRA meeting and I am sure I’ll do a killing.
Yesterday, I was expressing myself through glass. Today it’s jewelry. Who knows of what tomorrow will be made… polymer clay… wicket baskets… but I’ll still be a diver, I’ll still shoot guns and I’ll still keep looking at the sky wondering if I am alone in the Universe.
So, do I believe that I can crush it with my many passions? Hell yes. Or I’ll die trying.
By the way, I highly recommend to anyone to read Gary’s book.
A bientôt!
Patricia
© 2010 – Patricia C. O’Neill
