Joseph Nassise

A few months ago, I awoke one morning and realized that my passion for writing had all but disappeared. Instead of sitting down at my desk full of enthusiasm for the work before me, I was dreading the time at the keyboard. I wanted to do anything but write. Mow the lawn. Repaint the house. Clean the carpet, individual strand by individual strand. Anything really, so long as I didn’t have to sit down at the computer and write.

 

I didn’t have writer’s block. I knew exactly where I needed to go with each of the projects I was involved with at the time. I had the words brimming in the back of my mind, ready to be released onto the page (or rather, the screen) in front of me. I had projects that needed to be completed. I just didn’t have any desire to do them.

 

For a guy who loves stories, who cherishes the art of creating them, this was a very troubling discovery. What had happened? Where had my passion gone?

 

At first I was devastated. I moped around the house for days, letting my keyboard get covered in dust and annoying the hell out of my wife. The deadline clock was ticking for three different projects, but I knew that unless I found my passion the material that I would produce would be next to useless anyway. A reader can tell when a writer’s heart isn’t in his work. I didn’t want to run the risk of losing my hard earned fans by producing less than acceptable work. I’d fought too hard and too long to get to where I was. Second rate work just wasn’t going to cut it. After I got over my initial reaction, I got angry. I was determined not to let my dream die so easily. In fact, I vowed that I would find my passion again or never write another word.

 

And so I set out in search of it.

 

I knew the first step had to be defining what it was I was looking for. What, exactly, was passion? Where does it come from? How does one sustain it?

 

Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept.” The Compact Oxford Dictionary claims it’s “a very strong emotion.” The Cambridge Dictionary of American English listed it as “a strong interest.”

 

Those definitions were okay. They clearly identified the object in question and gave meaning to why it was important in reference to what I do, but it just didn’t quite fit the bill for me. There was no heart to it, if you know what I mean. So I continued looking for another way of describing it and it wasn’t long before I hit on just the right one. I found it on the website of fellow life coach, Curt Rosengren, at PassionCatalyst.com.

 

Curt calls himself a passion catalyst. He helps people identify their passions and find careers that ignite them. (A rather gratifying line of work, I would think.) According to Curt, passion is “the energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do.”

 

That was it! The definition I was looking for. And it gave me a big clue as to why my passion for writing had taken the 8:15 bus to Oakland when I wasn’t looking.

 

I decided to take a look at how much of my personal time and energy was devoted to my writing. After all, if my passion was based upon bringing more of me into my work, thereby generating the energy needed to sustain the endeavor over the long haul, it was probably a good idea to know where all of ME was going.

 

Sitting down that evening, I wrote out what I did during a typical weekday. At the time, it looked something like this:

 

6:30 am – Get up with the kids. Give them breakfast and get them dressed.

7:00 am – Get ready for work.

7:30 am – Drop the kids off at school and commute to the office.

8:15 am – Start the workday.

5:30 pm – End the workday.

6:00 pm – Come home, eat dinner, help the kids with their homework, and help put them to bed.

9:00 pm – Spend some time with my wife.

9:30 pm – Sit down to get some writing done.

11:30 pm – Go to bed.

 

That’s a highly abbreviated version of my typical day, but the activity served its purpose and I’m sure you can see why. Despite having carried out this same schedule day in and day out ever since my writing career had started four years ago, it wasn’t until I actually sat down and set it out in black and white that I realized how lopsided it was. The thing (after my family) that I was most passionate about, the thing that consumed my thoughts and drove me to better and greater achievements – that was the very last thing that got my attention and energy during the day.

 

But what could I do about it? I couldn’t ignore my family, even if I’d wanted to. The house is only so big, after all, and four kids can be quite the distraction. I couldn’t quit the day job – little things like the mortgage, school payments, car payments, food bills, and the like weren’t just going to go away on their own. I couldn’t sacrifice any more sleep; there just weren’t that many hours left in the day.

 

How could I focus more of me (meaning my time, energy, and enthusiasm) into my writing, given the current demands on my schedule?

 

The answer, which I’ll tell you about next time, required more than just a small step of faith. It needed a giant leap into the unknown.

 

A leap I willingly took.

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