Part II Perseverance…writing…passion
Read Part I The search for job satisfaction about my search for job satisfaction
The last few weeks and months have really changed things for me. Aside from a lot less sleep (for many reasons), I have started to find a passion for something that has really impacted so many areas of my life.
Ironically, I choose today to write about this. This post was supposed to be about one thing and now it has turned into something else completely different.
I am not superstitious at all but Friday the 13th was a bad day. It started with me actually crashing our production system at work with a job I ran on Thursday. It wasn’t completely my fault but it wasn’t a good way to start the day.
A couple of other things happened but nothing was worse than the upgrade for the website I write for. It was HORRIBLE! Pictures, links, and the format of my articles were crap. Javascript code was no longer working and completely trashed what was left of the words on the page. A year’s worth of work was laughable and embarrassing to view.
As I look back on today, it just shows how much we can be tested during inopportune times. It seems that when we are riding a high, a low soon follows. When things go wrong, we find out how much we want something. And so even after today, I can still write.
A writer’s journey
My first journal was about a trip to see a girl
For many years, I have traveled over various parts of the country and world and never wrote about any of my adventures. I would make an attempt to journal many times but grew tired of it quickly. Even in my personal life, I never had a personal journal growing up.
Honestly, I hated English and grammar but I was recognized a few times for my writing – school essay contests, short stories, even well-written emails for work. Sometimes I have to work very hard to say things just right, the way I want. Sometimes it comes out beautifully, other times it’s a jumbled mess.
I don’t know what it is about writing that I enjoy. It’s pretty obvious that it was something I never dreamed about doing when I was young. So where did the love of writing come from?
It was a process. It still is. I am not sure I’ve found my voice. Yet I am learning what writing is all about.
Writing is passion. It’s a passion for what you enjoy. It’s connecting with people, places, stories, and events in a way that you can process your thoughts and feelings and write in such a way that your voice leaves people eagerly anticipating the next word on the page. It’s a skill you develop and get better at over time but never perfect.
It’s a discipline that must be exercised. It’s a self discovery of your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions combined with an awareness of the world around you. Yet it continues to evolve. Your voice reflects who you are. It’s uniquely you. Understanding that voice and discovering a style that works for you takes time.
And that’s only the beginning. What do you write about? Romance? Making people laugh? The analysis of facts presented through scientific thought? Inspirational stories? Self-help and improvement? Sports? World news?
What you write about is the key to writing. You must find the passion in order to write. If passion doesn’t drive you, then the desire to write will fade over time. For me, it took time to discover what that was. Now I know it is travel.
Stay tuned – Part III Travel writing is job satisfaction
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Agreed, Jeremy. Most writer’s fail not due to a lack of talent, but due to a lack of perseverance. Passion is a key ingredient to writing success.
Thanks Andy. Sometimes it’s hard to not want success or recognition immediately. However, if that is what drives you, then the passion isn’t really there. As important as passion is, the first point matters as well – perseverance. You make a good point in emphasizing that as well. You have to pay your dues, let your passion drive you, be consistent, and enjoy the process.
Great post Jeremy, I now understand what you were upset about on Friday. I hope they can make some changes there to make things look better and you feel better about it.
Kind of reaching back to Part I, you said you knew you didn’t want to be an engineer. Ha, I did and sort of was. I spent quite a bit of energy attempting to avoid english classes and anything that involved writing. I hated having to write on the dictated subjects. Fast forward a number of years and I, like you, find a lot of satisfaction in writing for my own blog. I can let my mind wander and fill out the ideas naturally as opposed to forced structures and themes from school. There is a real satisfaction involved in making yourself understood; presenting your ideas and understanding of the world.
I hate the phrase “paying your dues”. I get the sentiment and have no issue with the idea that in order to master something you must spend time on it and be humble enough to learn from others that have way more experience. But when it gets put as ‘paying dues’ the idea of learning and practice seems to boil down to just surviving and sending off money. “Put your time in” is almost as bad to me. I don’t actually have a nice pithy phrase for it. “Practice makes perfect” seems closer, but misses out on the learning aspect. Oh well. Passion and practice and humbling oneself to learn I guess is what my wandering mind is trying to say.
Good for you for finding your expression, look forward to part III.
Andrew, thanks so much for your thoughtful comments and insights. I agree that ‘paying your dues’ isn’t the best expression out there but the sentiment is true. Maybe not so much that surviving and money factor into is as much as what I wrote – passion and perseverance.
Most dreams have obstacles. And obstacles aren’t the issue. They are there to see how badly you want something and how much you are willing to push through. ‘Paying your dues’ can be thought of as those obstacles that get in our way. Rarely are there overnight successes so it does take hard work and patience to get where you want.
After all, if success came immediately what would we learn from it? I think the key in whatever we do or enjoy is the process/journey. In that, we learn so much about ourselves and life that this is what matters. Sometimes the patience and perseverance helps carry the passion and tests us to see how much we want it.
And in the end, whether we realize our dream or not, we hopefully have learned things by ‘paying our dues.’