March 2025: Passions

In this post:

Another look at improving self-awareness with a focus on personal passions.

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This series of posts started with a post on Values.

This post is about Passions.

The next four posts will be about Aspirations, Fit, Patterns, and Reactions.

The questions about Passions include the following:

1 What kind of day would make me leap out of bed in the morning?

2 How much does my current routine give me the chance to have this kind of day?

3 What projects or activities do you never seem to get sick of and/or lose track of time while you’re doing them?

As before, we’ll be sure we’re using a singular definition.

For our purposes, Passions are “strong liking, interest, or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept.”

While I no longer hold the same intensity of passion as I did in my youth, I cannot forsake my passion for gaming. 

I started playing the likes of Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo at age 5. 

Still my favorite Japanese role playing game, Chrono Trigger just turned 30 years old and the passion that other players have for it remains to this day, as evidenced by this recently released remix album I found on YouTube – I looped this video the first few hours that I worked on this post.

At age 9, I started PC gaming.

I still play Lethal Company almost every Saturday with friends. I picked up Marvel Rivals recently. I’ll be picking up Baldur’s Gate 3 in the near future. I’ve burned literally hundreds of hours on the likes of Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Hades, Hades 2, and League of Legends.

I created and ran a Student Organization with the sole purpose of playing more Super Smash Brothers (also hundreds of hours…) during college after coordinating the entire state of South Carolina’s then-dying Smash scene in the early 2010s.

I scheduled events, woke up early to travel across and between states, and made life-long relationships because of my passion for gaming.

If I tried to say I did not like gaming, I have years of evidence to contradict me.

Now, gaming is not how I make my livelihood – right now, that’s through my work. That said, while I may not share the same intensity of passion for work that I do for gaming (or writing!), I do know that there are some things about work that I am way more enthusiastic about than not. That is how I’ll be approaching the questions below.

1 What kind of day would make you leap out of bed in the morning?

After Sunday night’s chores are complete, Monday begins peeking around the corner of my mind, dutifully closing the weekend.

0600 rolls around, and my alarm goes off.

The difference between me grumpily snoozing the alarm for 30 minutes and grumpily rolling out of the comfortable warmth of a cocoon of pillows and blankets depends on a small number of things.

First, do I have clear objectives to pursue when I get to the office?

Will certain team members be present during the day?

Am I anticipating any unique events during the week?

An event as simple as an 0830 meeting can spark a level of enthusiasm – not quite passion, sure – that having an empty calendar just doesn’t inspire. But, knowing that something is waiting for me to exert effort is motivating for me.

While it’s normal for a cubicle neighbor to be in their place in the office each day, the difference when they are gone is often significant on my mood. I am always, even if slightly, in better spirits when certain teammates are present. Fortunately, my current office does not also provide a similar situation where I am in a worse mood when certain other people are present…

I also look forward to deviations from the routine such as all calls, potluck events, retirements, and – especially if I don’t have to coordinate it – the holiday parties. 

On weekends, I usually have some kind of activity planned that I’m looking forward to, whether tabletop gaming, video games with friends, a movie, or some other sort of outing.

What gets you going?

2 How much does my current routine give me the chance to have this kind of day?

My current routine only gives me so much control over the factors I mentioned earlier. Fortunately, the bulk of my day is governed by planning what I’ll be doing at work for the week.

Yes, my tasks are generally assigned to me by leadership, but the timing of most of those tasks is up to me. Generally, I follow a prioritization of objectives guided by significance, importance, and urgency.

I believe if my office had more people to spread the workload, I’d likely get increased control over my day’s tendency to enable leaping out of bed. We are not so fortunate to have more people – or, our task load could bump up proportionally and nothing would change in that regard.

Besides that, however, I cannot control who shows up to work on a given day. And while I certainly have the opportunity to encourage or plan special events, the frequency I’d be willing to do that is probably monthly at most.

What’s in your control as far as having the kind of day you want? Can you make changes that would enable better control?

3 What projects or activities do you never seem to get sick of and/or lose track of time while you’re doing them?

Funny enough, I think my work has varied so much over the years that there’s not any clear sort of project or activity that I’d enjoy doing ad nauseam. My career has spanned staring at various technical documents, training to fly, actually flying (but not as a pilot), writing reports, reading reports, planning tests, executing tests, coordinating test assets, writing non-test plans, reading plans, reviewing documents…

Now, if I try to find some commonality in all of the work I’ve done, I really just like talking with people. The question asks about activities that make you lose track of time, and talking is definitely the biggest culprit.

Indeed, I looked forward to talking about all of the video games with whomever I could back in the day. I created an entire social media account for the sole purpose of interacting with others about Super Smash Bros across the country.

Clearly: talking to people is highly related to – if not outright is – my passion.

But, that’s my answer. What activities allow you to lose yourself in the flow of satisfying work or play?

Tie the answers to your question together with your thoughts…

As may be evident from my own answers to these questions, I’ve come to a (the?) conclusion that what I should pursue for my work – what my passion involves – is communicating with others. 

The precise mental machinations that got me there are not entirely obvious even to me, but I think the threads are enough.

I also think that this is an acceptably generic answer – I doubt there’s only one activity out there that would satisfy the pursuit of my passion.

What conclusions do you reach when you ask yourself these questions?