On Passion

There are many things I’m passionate about:

Of course, my family.

My relationship with Jesus Christ.

Food. I adore food. More to come on that later, I’m sure!

I love to travel. And I don’t mean just the “being on vacation” part of travel. I like all of it. I like going through security at the airport. I love hours in the car on a road trip. I love 9 hour flights. I like it when the flight attendant asks me if I want beef or chicken, and I get to open up that little package of airline food to see what surprise item awaits me. I love sitting in the airport people-watching during a long layover. Of course, I also love the other parts of travel. I live in the amazing USA, which I’ve experienced quite a bit of and adore, but I’ve also traveled to the UK, and Spain, and the Caribbean, and Morocco. And I love to see things I thought I would only ever see in books. I love meeting people who were so different than me, but still so much the same. I love to read the history behind centuries-old buildings and to see things that I don’t always understand but that are fascinating to discover. I love to travel.

I’m also passionate about books. I love to read. Novels, biographies, classics, poetry, magazines, whatever. I just love to read. I love to fill my mind with stories that aren’t my own. The more I learn about how others think and live and thrive, the more I learn about myself and the world around me. The more I get to know others’ stories, even if they’re just made-up stories, the more I appreciate my own. The more I understand about the struggles of others, the less I feel by myself. Books give me this. I have a bookshelf as my nightstand, and it is currently full of close to a hundred books just waiting to be read by me. My friends call me a book hoarder. True, but I’m not ashamed.

And among all these things about which I’m passionate, I have to say that writing is one, for sure. I have been a self-proclaimed writer for as long as I can remember. In Middle and High School I wrote a lot of really cheesy poetry. In college, I took a couple of creative writing courses and wrote some short stories, though there was really only one that I was really proud of. I also wrote some poetry then that was a little more free-form and not as cheesy. And in my adulthood, I’ve written a little here and there. The thing that was most fulfilling was my first real blog. I blogged almost every day, and I made friends through blogging that I’m still in contact with today. I had followers and heaps of comments, and I felt…well, like I could do this. Like I was finally a writer, even if it wasn’t a book. Even if I wasn’t getting paid. I was writing what I thought and what I felt, and people actually wanted to read it! It felt like what I was meant to do.

Somehow, it fell away. I got busier and it felt less important. I had a couple of tough blogging experiences and I got discouraged. So I saved some of my favorite blog posts, and deleted my blog. And I’ve regretted it almost since the moment I did. I miss blogging. I miss putting my thoughts out there into the world and seeing what others have to say about them. I miss it.

So here I am, for what it’s worth. We’ll see where it takes me.