The Point of Passion

Recently in my life I’ve begun to toy with the idea that I do not belong. Maybe due to my music choices that speak of the for-longed youth of the singers edging out of their own spruced years, or perhaps it’s from the uncertainty that I face for the entirety of the rest of my life. I feel as if I don’t really stand in a well off position in this life. Maybe that comes from the shallow desire for the certainty in life that a normal high schooler has, or perhaps it comes from the real me, that yearns to have a meaning in his life and to understand what he wants from it. Regardless I find that in my life I lack passion. I lack passion in school, I like passion in music, I lack passion in video. The passion, the real passion I find I still have is in these.

The reason why I rewrite the same story in every post I make is that the story is a piece of my past that defines me more than anything else. To paraphrase Nick Woodman, the CEO of GoPro. “Your passion is your inner voice telling you what to do with your life.” From the youngest age I can remember, I’ve been passionate about writing. As I got older I lost interest in creative writing, but where said spark faded the spark for blogging grew. I started to follow closer and closer to writers on popular technology sites and news sites, getting to know their styles. I began to learn about how the world they lived in worked and with each read my love for blogging grew larger and larger. Eventually after starting my own series of blogs and receiving feedback I knew what I wanted to do.

Distractions were everywhere in my life, I became distracted by coding. I quickly became infatuated with the idea of writing ideas to life and started to learn about coding websites. I built my first and longest site shortly, using my knowledge of HTML & CSS to create an environment that I felt comfortable in. To me, my website represented my ambitions to escape the path I was unfortunately put on. I path to this day that I desperately try to distance myself from. Another constant of my life has been a fallibility in character. A constant loss of interest and an inability to complete projects. The fear I have of this constant presence I can barely put into words. Procrastination dominates my life. To get an understanding of what procrastination feels like to me, and how it affects my life read this lovely essay on the subject by Tim Urban, the co-creator and main author of WaitButWhy.com here. There is a part two to this post about procrastination but the methods described in it do not fully describe my feelings on overcoming this undesired habit.

This endless procrastination has reeked havoc on my education, my friendships, and my projects. Stretching each of them to the point of breaking and throwing me into an endless spiral of stress until the final weeks of the quarter hit, each ¼ of the year a hell-storm of busy work in which miracles are readily performed. The only things that escapes this deep set affliction are my passions. Overcoming all forms of suppression my passion drives me to the point of obsession to complete tasks. In the production of projects and ideas that I find myself obsessing over I often spend entire days obsessing over minute details. Each time finding a key ingredient that trumps me. In all regards I keep pushing, setting each idea down until I am able to pick it back up at a later date.

The next distraction in my life become video production. I enrolled in our local schools media and news program, becoming obsessed with the idea of making a better production. I fell in love with the idea of making something so many people would see and with no limitations I felt free for the first time. I was able to make things with no restrictions. I had the motivation, the tools, and the people I needed to achieve my fever dreams of creation and I felt a sense of fulfillment that I had never felt before. Over this past summer I worked on creating my own production company. With the idea in my head about this previous years unbridled freedom I was convinced that I had found my true destiny. This year however I had my dream crushed. I realized that in everything I did I was being spoon fed the prophesied ideals of young filmmakers and creators. In reality the world of film is much, much more complicated. A truly creative person is stubborn. I had thought that I had understood what it meant to be just that. I was dead wrong. The ideas of some of my classmates surprised and impressed me. They overcame what I can only imagine their own personal hurdles to create thing adults dream of. From full featured movies to commercials these kids were more representatives’ of the creative culture than anyone I had ever met. And with their creativity came their stubbornness. From the subtle tweaks and suggestions to the attitude of a helicopter parent. Each creative person has their own personality. Though frustrating to no end, I could accept this. People love the things that they make, and the passions that they have are, to an extent, who they are. I respect them for their creations and talents. Those who I don’t respect however are the leaches. Those who spend their time pretending to be the geniuses of old when they have no creative spark of their own. They dream of being as great as those who they leach off of, and adopt a parasitic attitude. How many headaches they cause me. It was in these people I caught a glimpse outside of my rose colored glass, the illusion was shattered. Media was not the dream I had been chasing for my whole life, though amazingly fun I looked back into myself. It was at this time I knew what I loved and still love to do.

With era of my life ending I realize that I still am where I first started, here where I am today. With a full view of my passion in front of me, it is only in my actions in which I readily ignore this passion that I end up harming myself. Since this year I’ve learned to better control my procrastination, though on some subjects it is rampant. For the things I do not care about I don’t feel the need to suppress it. But on the subject of things that matter in my life I have overcome it. It’s almost as if a weight has been lifted off of my chest. I feel more free than I have ever felt before. I have once again reached the beginning of the path that loops forever. It is at this point in my life that I am given a choice, to choose the same path or move on and into the unknown at which I will take the road less traveled by.

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