Have you found your passion?

As I was walking home tonight, it came to me that I had the perfect topic to write about, albeit this may be a ramble, please stay with me.

Tonight, I met up with one of my good friend’s from November Project, Alice, and one of her friends from college – someone who is very into fitness, and happens to be working for a fitness company this summer. We had a drink and chatted about the different aspects of fitness – where do we workout? what blogs do we read? how do we find out about workouts? The list goes on and on, but basically I can sum it up in the – integration of fitness, blogs, and social media.

For anyone who knows me well, and as you can probably pick up from my blog, these are three things that I feel very strongly about in my everyday life. I would even venture to say that these are my “passions.”

Let’s rewind a bit to the years, 2004 – 2007, when I was in high school. The two major leaders in my life at the time, were the Head of the Upper School and my college counselor, who later became the interim Head of the Upper School. These two leaders had some of the greatest impact on my life, something that I didn’t realize at the time. Dr. White, the college counselor and later Head of the Upper School, is someone I grew to know very well through my high school years. We could even be found writing college applications and eating pizza rolls at her house, voluntarily, on Sunday afternoons during senior year. That’s just how close we became.

As we were writing these college applications, I can remember her telling us countless times, something that I likely found obnoxious at the time, about how in order to go to college and be TRULY successful, you must find your PASSION. At the time, I also thought this was absolutely nuts. How was a girl like me, at the age of 17, supposed to find my passion. I loved to run cross country and track, play basketball, at times, hang out with my friends and family, laugh, and just enjoy life. While all of these were very important to me, none of these were truly my passion (although my friends and family will always 100% be my rocks). I never thought about it at the time much, but I think while we were supposed to find our passion, and use this to draw us to our destination, it was during these times that we would figure out what our passion is.

At that time also, in my mind, I thought my passion had to be – biology, marketing, string theory, basically anything academic related. These were the things we were learning in school, but I should have stopped at the time to realize, this wasn’t what was going to be my PASSION. I was always strong in school, did my work, and got good grades, but this was not where my passion lied. Never once in my life (maybe once, but not more), have I ever thought about being an academic (I’m eternally grateful to those who have taken this route in life, and who knows, maybe someday I’ll teach). Yes, my academic’s’ have always been important to making me who I am, but these are only a means. In no ways were these the end for me, although for some people they might be.

I think all along, I never realized what my passions really could be. Although I don’t think that I have 100% found my true passion, I think through my years of academics, working as an accountant, and figuring out life, I have gotten a little closer to finding my passions. I’m not sure I’ll ever be 100% there, but boy have I gotten so much closer.

When I stop to smell the roses, or as I said in my instagram tonight – Look around – Look up, look down, look all around – my passions really do lie in my fitness, writing, and social media. These are the things that I love and really bring the true happiness to my life, along with so many other things. But these are the root of it all. Yes, I’ll likely always have a different job (that’s just who I am), but these are the things that make me truly happy – MY PASSIONS!

So that was long, but I really hope you stayed with me through it. I’ve gotten lots of feedback about avoiding the day to day with my blog posts, so I’m hoping that got a little deeper into who I really am.  So thank you to you, for reading this.

What’s your passion? Or do you even know what your passions are yet?