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Remember back before you were an adult, and you still had all your hopes and dreams? And then somewhere along the way, life squashed it out of you? You had to make sure you went to a good college, entered the right degree program, and got a job in a stable industry with a good wage. Then as an adult, you try “finding your passion” again, which has long disappeared since childhood.
Like everybody else as a teenager, I had my own dreams and passions that drove me. I loved travel, foreign language, and anything international. All summer I would watch Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel. My love for all things international even prompted me to learn two foreign languages in high school, and to host a French exchange student my junior year. I even tried applying to a foreign language academy weekend program at a local college.
When responsibility replaces passion
Then college happened, and life flashed before my eyes. I struggled to choose a major I both liked and thought would have a clear path to employment after college. Every summer between college, I worked my butt off in part time jobs and full time jobs to have spending money at school. Eventually, I landed in accounting, a respected profession that I was legitimately interested in. I met my future husband, graduated, began working, and was soon planning a wedding. In other words, I grew up.
All of that passed by in such a blur, and during that time I was so busy and focused on a bunch of other really important things, that all of my previous passions were shelved. They just weren’t as important, nor did they seem practical.
Finding your passion again
However, once I married my husband, it was time to start finding my passion again. We decided to start planning little getaways together. I enthusiastically hopped to planning our first trip to Charleston, and it was a great success. We started planning some more small trips when we could afford it, all within the U.S.
While I did have a small obsession with Europe in my youth, for some reason I never really considered it in my early days of travel. I just always thought of it as something other, possibly richer, people did. Plus I was just plain intimidated to figure out a trip to an entirely different continent, let alone country, especially where English is not the first language. This was outside of my husband’s comfort zone too, so we just didn’t really prioritize it. I wasn’t even sure we would go before we started a family. At some point, I just resigned myself to the fact that Europe may not happen until we were empty-nesters.
Finally figuring it out
Three years later, Icelandair started coming to Cleveland. A direct flight from Cleveland to Europe meant cheaper flights with better accessibility. As more confident travelers now, we took the leap and planned our first trip to England and Scotland. It seemed like as soon as we did that, a flood of passion came flowing back into me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I mean, it even prompted starting this blog!
Since then, we have gone back to visit Iceland, and now we are planning a trip to Italy and France. Better yet, I’ve been studying French and Italian again, which was something I didn’t even realize I was missing so much. It feels good finding my passion, or rediscovering it, and to be doing things that I had long forgotten I loved so much. Now that I do have this awareness, I am going to make every effort to never lose sight of it again.
For those still searching, you may not have it all figured out right away, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. Maybe you already know your passion, and it’s sitting somewhere inside of you ready to emerge at any moment.
Have you ever had to put aside your passion for a while?
