SubscribeLast night I went to a talk by Chase Jarvis. He’s a very good speaker, very personable and passionate about creating. He introduced a philosophy that he’s spoken about before:
* create
* share
* sustain
* (repeat)
Sharing and sustaining, for me, are the easy part. He spoke about sharing through social media, blogs, websites, etc. and sustaining by doing the stuff you need to do to make money and cover your bills so that you can do the stuff you want to do: create.
Awesome, inspirational, and so true.
When he was talking about creating, he kept coming back to the statements “Shoot what you’re passionate about” and “Shoot with your personal style/background in the images”. The 2nd one is not so bad: don’t clone other people’s work (except maybe as an exercise), shoot from your creativity and your heart and the images will sing.
On the topic of “Shoot what you’re passionate about” he started asking people in the audience what they were passionate about and I found myself shrinking away from the question. Squirming in my seat. Thinking “Oh Gods, don’t pick me.” I thought, “If he picks me I could say ‘diving’ because I used to be passionate about that…”! This has started a bit of an introspective process for me.
Where has my passion gone? Have I ever had any? It certainly seems to be missing.
It seems, in thinking about it, there is nothing I’m passionate about these days. My work is enjoyable, but not my passion. My home, is comfortable. My wife, I love and she’s my best friend. My pets are great. My hobbies are there. New tech is interesting. But nothing really excites me. Nothing wakes me up in the morning with a “What a great day, today I get to do X!”.
In the past, I’ve had goals. I think those goals, self-set, were things that highlighted my passion of the time. Become a scuba instructor, learn something new, build something, etc. These have all disappeared without new ones to take their places. So far, attempts at new ones, have no sticking power.
My world has no bright colours, just a monotone of gray. How boring and WTF! I’ve started to feel, somehow, cheated. Stuck in a rut of my own creating and not really sure how to break out.
Is this what causes mid-life crisis?
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