Passion

I finally started writing the article that my local paper was interested in, about some of the places I visited when I was in Texas. Since Texas it's been three grueling weeks of very late nights at work, and weekends with my work laptop at home doing what the weekdays didn't give me time to finish. And I brought my work laptop home again this weekend, but I haven't set it up yet. I absolutely have to write this article--it's for actual money, if they like it.

Right after I got started, my son called (he lives with his dad about ten minutes from me) and invited me to go with him to tour one of the very obscure local landmarks--something I've been wanting to do for months but never remembered at the right time. So I hit save on my article of one paragraph by then and rushed over for the last tour of the day. The docent who was scheduled to lead our tour had called in sick, so we did the self-guided version, and I really enjoyed it.

After the tour, we went to Denny's for a late lunch and talked about what we were doing. He's a film studies major at the community college, and today's tour of the landmark was a film-location scouting trip for his final project. For me, the tour was research for a potential tour company I've been thinking of starting, primarily so I can get some practical experience leading tours, so I can have a better shot at getting a tour director job at one of the big tour companies.

The plan is that I start by taking some of my friends on weekend day trips to the local landmarks, using my minivan for transportation. I'll have to set up a tour company as an actual business before I start the tours. Boring, administrative prep work before I can get to the fun stuff.

As I talked to my son and told him some of the other ideas I have--not just taking Christian groups to the same old places that tour companies take everybody, but taking Christians to places with real meaning for Christians--I could feel the enthusiasm just pouring out of me. I even said to him, "Look at how I am when I talk about this, compared to when I talked about my job."

There's real passion when I talk about the Apocalypse Tapestry in the château at Angers, France (one of the "Châteaux of the Loire" in France). But the major tour companies won't take you there. If they stop in Angers at all, they let you look around the town's cathedral. I haven't been to that cathedral, so I can't comment on it, but the Apocalypse Tapestry is a must-see, especially if you're a Christian. And this is from someone who saw it when I didn't care about God. I was amazed even then.

I've also been trying to catch up a little on my blog reading tonight, since I've been doing nothing but work and sleep the past few weeks, and I came across this post from Lores Rizkalla at Just A Woman. It's on people who follow their passion.

Are you really living? If yes, I rejoice with you. If no, then I pray that you'd do something to change today. Find the thing you love to do, like Chris, Taylor and Sasha. But, the key to really living is to remember what Sasha said about keeping even what we love to do in perspective.

No, I'm not really living. I'm just spinning my wheels, trying to figure out what I can do that will both support me and tap into my passions: travel, writing, photography, story-telling, public speaking, foreign languages, helping other people discover the wonders that await them (an example: At Disneyland one time, I struck up a conversation with a couple from New Zealand while we were standing in line for the Indiana Jones ride. I gave them the priority list of rides they should go on, with a brief description, to make sure they didn't miss out on the good ones by waiting in long lines for the less worthy rides).

And what do I do for work? I modify and run programs under tight time schedules and heavy pressure for impatient sales people, and my reward for finishing a project quickly is to get more of the same. Endlessly. One of the guys in our group is going out on disability for stress, under doctor's orders, and many of the rest of us are wishing we had mentioned the stress to our doctor first.

There's no passion at work. There's only the sense that we're turning into those creatures from Disney's "The Little Mermaid," the ones who sold their souls to Ursula, the evil octopus villain, and became wretched moaning things on the bottom of the ocean. I don't want to stay that way much longer. But I need the time to myself that my job hasn't been giving me, in order to make real progress toward any of my passions. And I need to decide which passion to focus on, because the scattergun approach isn't going to work in the long run.

Meanwhile, my article is half-finished. Break time is over. Time to get back to writing about Texas....