How the hell did it take me this long to decide this should be a topic? This is what I live for and have been preaching is pretty much the end all be all to our existence since I was 25 and it takes me until now to remember to write about it?
Maybe because I’m not lacking it anymore. At least not in the past few weeks since I started writing.
Strange how once you get something you forget you were ever even missing it.
Passion = Inspiration? Absolutely. Passion has a lot of connotations (get your mind out of the gutter). Yeah it can be a “guttural” meaning. Was gonna say that’s a new word but it isn’t.
Wow, really thinking about that word guttural now. So appropriate. What gets you in your gut? (PG people!) I don’t think that’s the exact meaning of that word but who cares, I like it.
So what moves you? Like really moves you? This is starting to sound like my first writing because passion, like inspiration, moves you in your gut, your soul. Makes you feel something. Anything.
What’s the difference between the two? (Ugh now I gotta compare and contrast some shit. My English teachers would be proud.)
Passion is the building block of inspiration. That which makes you feel great things compels you to do great things. So what are you passionate about? Maybe it’s not even a what but a who? What or who stirs such deep, raw emotion in you that you feel compelled to act, to do, to achieve?
I am passionate about animals. That’d be the first thing that comes to mind. Feel like my caring goes just a bit deeper than the average person. Not to discount pet parents’ love for their furry children or peoples’ empathy for those poor clubbed baby seals. But I wanted to be that person that does more. I wanted to change the world in my mid 20s and thought I know, I’ll be an animal activist. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.
So I inundated myself by joining different animal rights organizations, reading all their newsletters, magazines, social media, any information I could get my hands on. I even wrote letters (yep, on paper, were talking 1998 here) to different restaurants one time asking them to stop selling Chilean sea bass because it was endangered.
Do you freakin know Outback wrote me back and discontinued selling sea bass just because I asked them to? No joke. I still have the letter to this day from them thanking me for writing and making them aware of the plight of the sea bass. One of my proudest moments ever.
I changed something. Something big (well kinda). Seemed big to me and to Mr. Sea Bass I’m sure. I had an impact. Because I was passionate about something.
But guess what? No one pays you to write letters. No one pays you at all to be an activist of any kind. PECO doesn’t say, “hey that’s great, guess what, for your good work we’ll give you a pass on this month’s electric bill.”
So responsibility started getting in the way. My effort waned. And it sadly took my passion with it. I tried (admittedly not enough) to explore other avenues in my quest to save the animals. What an uphill battle. No one pays you to push stranded whales back into the ocean.
The something I was passionate about put me on a lot of one-way avenues that lead to Poverty St. aka the main thoroughfare through Strugglesville. Strugglesville, where the car of passion runs out of gas, pulls over to the side and sits there alone with a sad white towel hanging out of the window. Abandoned.
Okay that was a bit dramatic but you get what I’m saying.
I still and always will have a passion for animals; those poor, innocent souls who have been disappointed by us selfish humans. I still won’t eat veal. I’ll still stop my car and get out to save a stray dog in the middle of the road. And I sure as hell will still slam on my brakes if a squirrel runs out in front of my car. Better have your seatbelt on!
I let responsibility get in the way of my passion. I also let self doubt creep in. “I can never make money doing anything like this.” (I’m definitely not greedy and don’t need a lot but having heat and lights on is a pretty damn nice thing.)
I had doubted I could ever really turn my passion into a career.
Then I found inspiration a few weeks ago.
Spoiler alert – no, I haven’t found a new career in the animal field. What a build up these last few paragraphs have been!
Yep, no new career at all. Sorry for the let down, you didn’t see that one coming. Bet you thought I’d say I changed things and now I’m speaking in countries all over the world about animal rights, changing laws, changing people’s thinking, saving animals on a global scale. Nope, sorry guys. What a great ending that would have been!
But this is reality.
Instead I found inspiration in something I forgot about or maybe never knew I was even passionate about in the first place – writing.
No, this isn’t a new career. Well, maybe it could be someday, who knows. That chapter has yet to be written. But I’ve learned that this writing thing is quickly becoming something that I have great passion for.
Hell, I was about to go to sleep an hour ago but was laying in bed thinking about all this stuff but said I’m tired, I’ll write a couple sentences about all this tomorrow.
Fuck. I know myself, I’ll forget. Damn just get up right now and write it down!
Now here I am several paragraphs in. Still tired, but now inspired.
My inspiration began stirring all these things up in my head weeks ago. And now my new passion for writing made me get out from under the covers in my 60 degree house and get all this shit down on paper. (60 degrees? Yep, PECO still ain’t cheap.)
Passion is that thing you feel so strong about that it compels you to get up, get out from under the covers and inspires you to do something.
Okay maybe I am getting pretty tired now. Trying to think of a clever way to conclude this stream of consciousness.
That’s just it though. There is no conclusion. At least I hope not. I hope this level of passion continues.
Deep down, in my gut, I think it will.
All these words I’ve gotten down on paper (or the computer) these past few weeks have made me feel all kinds of emotions. Some good, some great. Some, well, not so great.
But that’s the whole point. More so the point to make you who’s reading this feel some type of way too. Any kind of way. To hopefully make an impact on anyone reading this, however small.
To hopefully, maybe, through my passion make someone feel – feel inspired.
In a previous post I wrote that I had thought I didn’t even like writing. I thought I just didn’t like the drudgery that I had learned to associate writing with. Drudgery because I was required to do it for school. But maybe it wasn’t the perceived drudgery of it that turned me off after all.
Maybe it was actually because of the feelings. Ah feelings! Scary word!
It’s hard to face feelings. Hard to see your raw emotions on paper staring back at you. But what is life without emotions, without passion? Passion for something, anything? Anyone?
It’s pretty freakin boring that’s what it is.
So I embrace this passion now, this inspiration. So I’ll keep writing and see where it takes me. Hopefully not through the town of Strugglesville.
But right now, at 2:00 a.m., my pillow is inspiring me to go to sleep.
CM
12/8/19
