Finding Life's Passion

As I prepared to leave the working world a few months ago, one of my main goals during this hiatus from paid employment was to seek out and explore things that I am passionate about. The intention was to do this with an eye to the future and finding a second career revolving around something I am passionate about. Two months later, I can't honestly say that I've discovered any new interests or developed any current interests into a life's passion. I've continued to enjoy what I enjoyed before: cooking, reading, and afternoon naps. I've done little with the things that I wanted to explore further like writing, sewing, and deep relaxation/hypnotherapy. I have found that there isn't a lot of free time with my new occupation. I could organize my time more efficiently, use my quiet afternoons during naptime to do some writing or sewing. However, this new lifestyle requires more physical energy and stamina so that I've found it necessary to rest when the kids are resting.

Since it doesn't seem that this type of "life work" gets done without significant effort on my part, I think that I may need to set myself some small goals and outline some steps to get there. I am very interested in writing. I have several novels that I've begun including one half-finished novel from National Novel Writing Month. It was a very successful exercise for me last November to set myself a daily goal of 1500 words and just write until I got it all on paper. These types of small, micro-goals are what helps to keep me on track. I can try to do something small every day but find it difficult to face down some large dream like writing a 50,000 word novel. I need everything cut down to sizable chunks. So I'm setting myself some micro-goals for July. July will be explore my passions month. I'm focusing on three interests that I have: writing, deep relaxation/hypnotherapy, and sewing. My goals will be to write 500 words per day, spend 15 minutes in some type of deep relaxation exercise, and spend two hours per work sewing. Rather than focusing on completing something, I'm committing to practicing these activities on a regular basis to see how interested I really am in these things and whether there is potential for them to turn into something more than just a hobby.

Perhaps, for some people, definitely for me, life's passion doesn't just appear out of nowhere as some type of compulsion. Life's passion might just be a spark, an interest in something, that needs to be developed through time and personal effort. Since my passion hasn't found me, I need to go and find my passion.