No Passions Right Now? Here’s Why It’s Okay
If you haven't heard this enough...
It’s the new year.
You’re back into swing of things, that being the regular day job. You’re trudging through and wondering if this is what the next six months will be like.
You may have set some goals, planned your year or something close to planning, but nothing definitive to work towards. In the meantime, your colleagues seem ready to crush 2018.
What if you don’t know what goals to set?
What if, you don’t know what you’re passionate about?
Maybe you’re the type of creative to have several passions and don’t know which one to pursue this year?
Hey, I’m here to say—it’s all good if you don’t know.
“Hold on, Jonathan. It’s good if I don’t know? What?”
Yep.
We all have goals to accomplish and passions to pursue. But...
Don’t let the thoughts of the bigger picture stop you moving forward.
Two years ago I was fairly vague about what area of design I wanted to attack. You see, I had tonnes of interests and tonnes of things I was good at. I thought I’d be a killer 3D animator (which I studied at University) but instead I discovered, motion graphics, typography, character design and now, copywriting, business and identity design. See? So many things!
That’s why it’s been two “long” years of exploration and getting my hands dirty to figure the best route for myself.
Two years sounds pretty long right to figure it out right? Good news though, there’s a chance you’re able to find out quicker than I did.
However, how you will know is simply by doing things, making the time to explore, practice, practice, practice and really dive deep into the area you have chosen.
Remember, only through the doing will you find the motivation to keep going.
Feeling Pressured?
The one thing you choose to do now, doesn’t have to be the thing you’ll do for the rest of your life.
Your creative path is constantly tweaking and refining and pivoting as you go.
For the creative with multiple passions, choosing one subject or one passion, means all your other interests are on pause. Your current subject deserves your full 100% attention.
So if you love music but you also love illustration and you pick illustration, that doesn’t mean you can no longer produce music. Illustration is your current season of design. Seasons change. Which means you can pick up music and create killer beats once again.
You’re still exploring so it’s all good to pursue multiple passions to figure out your line of attack.
The point is you attempt all things you have interest in at the beginning, to discover what you love to do. Keep exploring!
Keep Your Primary Passion Away From Money
If you want to make money right away…
You’re going to have a hard time.
You should have a day job covering your bills, while you build your skills and projects on the side.
I know, eventually you do want to make money from your passion and that’s my goal too. But if you try to monetise too soon, the result will be losing the love you had for the passion. You tried to monetise too soon. So now the passion is gone.
I’ve experienced losing my love for creating art. The noob me tried to earn an income from what I love to do, because that was the advice we were given “Follow your passion!” “Do what you love!” and although true, there’s just so many mental obstacles and growing up you have to do to make any money from your art.
Worrying About Time Is Distracting You From What Is Important
If you’re stressing about not having enough time, my initial answer is slow down.
I’ll try to explain.
When the topic is big as “what do you want for the rest of your life?” it’s almost like getting hit by a stun grenade.
“Rest of my life? Oh, man. Erm…”
After the initial stumble, we picture the end result of what our life looks like. Probably loads of success, bags of money, a thriving business, a healthy family. Then we think about how do we get there? You need to this, this and this, then learn this, this and this—on and on it goes.
So stop for a moment. Slow. Down.
How to make any progress is by focusing on the next step. That step no matter how insignificant, is progress.
Successful people don’t worry about how long something will take—they just do it.
Saying you don’t have enough time is an excuse to not do the things you should be doing. We never have enough time, no one has enough time to do everything they want to do.
Make a choice, make the time, make the effort to do something right now.
You’re not a failure if you find out what you thought was a passion of yours becomes the quite opposite. That’s progress my friend. That’s another interest tried and ticked off the list.
Ready To Create Awesome Stuff?
So now we have talked about our worries, let’s see if you’re truly made for building something awesome.
The next couple of blog posts I’m going to talk about why you need a day job to build your creative business. It’s not going to be an easy feat and much harder to put into action than it is for me to write.
The good thing, I’ve been through the challenges and struggles of finding your passion, finding the time and staying disciplined for so long—all while working at a day job that sucked.
Stay tuned.
As always, I want to thank you for you reading my articles!
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