The other day I was given this question by a new acquaintance, “if you lost your job today, what would you do to follow your passion”? I thought that the work I was doing was my passion, but I quickly realized I wouldn’t do anything remotely close to my job. It got me thinking about what my passion is. I’m wondering, how did you find your passion?
Mike, Iowa, U.S.A
How old were you when you knew you wanted to have a “creative” career, a job in “the arts”. How did you imagine it, including the hoped for outcomes and what that would mean for your future self? How has the reality been different from the wish? Now, working as an artist in a creative career, what has been your biggest surprise? Disappointment? Highlight?
Nancy, Canada
Dear Mike and Nancy,
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to work in television. But more specifically than that, I wanted to make television at the BBC and, even more specifically than that, I want to make television at the BBC’s famous Television Centre.
This strange post-war hulk of grey and brown might seem like an unusual place for a boy to park his passions but growing up I was obsessed with working here. It seemed, to my young eyes, to be a dream factory, where creativity and technology met with prestige and purpose. (The closest comparison for any North American readers is probably 30 Rock).
I was endlessly fascinated by the behind-the-scenes machinations of television. I looked for clues of cameras and crew on my TV screen, I spent actual pocket money on industry manuals which I would order from a confused lady at my local bookstore. I learned the layout of Television Centre, I learned the names of all the equipment and systems they used to make TV shows.
I was so focused on this future for myself, I wished my childhood would just hurry up and be done. I knew where I was going and I was in a hurry to get there.
Well, Mike and Nancy, in 2013 the BBC closed TV Centre down and sold it to property developers.
The building that I invested so much of my passion towards is now a complex of overpriced apartments and boutique restaurants. I never got to make television there, and now I never will.
Broken dreams die hard. I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but I have dreams where I am walking around the old building. I know where I am going but all the doors are locked and I can’t get into the studios. Blurry figures look at me, like I am not supposed to be there. I am pursued. Google Maps, rather wonderfully, produced a street view inside the centre in the weeks before it closed. More often than I care to admit, I have wandered the corridors like a virtual ghost.
Except to haunt somewhere, you actually have to have been there first.
So I learned a hard lesson about finding my passion. You can’t help who or what you fall in love with, but avoid industries, institutions, companies or, indeed, buildings — if you can.
Finding your passion
The work, I think, is to peer beneath the surface level of our passions and look for the more general archetypes beneath. If your passion lies in one of the creative industries undergoing tumultuous change, this work is essential.
An exercise that really helped me is called “What Do You Actually Want?”. Take a notebook and, each morning for at least six weeks, answer this question, directly and truthfully, listening to your voice in that moment. A few things happen: first of all, your heart gradually gains confidence to speak, quietly at first and then louder; secondly patterns will emerge. Some desires will appear repeatedly, while others will be temporary flings. After weeks of answering this question, collect and organise your responses to see those patterns.
What are my passions today? I would struggle to answer that question. I have a compulsion to create and a fascination with visual stories. For now, compulsion and fascination do just fine.
My experience has taught me that passions are not fixed, they change and develop as we move through life. The same year the BBC put the shutters down on my childhood dreams, I moved to France, fell in love and started my YouTube channel.
Life finally started happening.
Perhaps — released from an obsession over my future and the passions that would take me there — I was able to start living in the present.
Until another Sunday soon,
