Passion. Blogging about what I’m passionate about, ought to be easy, right?
Wrong. When I sat down and pondered what I’m passionate about for Dotterel’s BMB blogging carnival, I realised that I don’t really know. I don’t really seem to be driven by passion atm, it’s as much as I can do to whip up a mild enthusiasm. I’m putting this down mainly to the continuing exhaustion of a non sleeping toddler in the house, along with the round the clock home education of two more children, but really that’s just an excuse.
I’ve lost the plot. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I have no focus, no drive, no direction. I get through the days wondering if it’s bedtime yet, and the nights desperate for another hour’s sleep before the next feed, dreading waking up to find it’s already morning, and I’m still tired.
Always tired. I even went to the doctor about it, and he told me to go for a bloodtest. That’s going to happen, isn’t it, someone with a needle phobia is going to get up early in the morning and make it to the local hospital to be voluntarily punctured. Hm. Not really.
So I might be a bit run down, but it seems odd that I can run 3.5 miles and finish barely out of breath, but still be just tired all the time.
Maybe the problem *is* that I’m missing passion. Perhaps passion is what gives you energy to pick yourself up, smile and face the day with the feeling that you might just win. In which case, I need to find it again. I do remember having it once. When I was young, I was passionate about writing, about poetry, about being a vet. I lost the last one first, when I didn’t get the grades, but I was still writing poetry well into my 20s. I even got published once. Really published, and got paid for it too. And I was writing fiction up until I got a real job and then I diverted my energy into that, into being the best programmer, getting promotions the quickest, and balancing my career with having a family.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, the passion for life drained away.
Maybe it went a couple of years ago when my sister died. Perhaps it started to drip earlier when I had the first miscarriage. Can I hope it’s only dormant? That somewhere in me, there is still a tiny flame, that one day I’ll find a source of fuel and it will reignite and sweep me to some grand achievement, and I’ll know I was worth something. Worth anything. Because that’s the sneaking fear. That I’m pointless. That what I say and think and feel doesn’t matter to any more ppl than my family and my children. That when I’m gone no one will remember me, that my words are spoken in the wrong direction at the wrong time, and instead of being taken up, echoed and amplified, they are whipped away on a wind of indifference.
Perhaps my passion is just drowned out right now in grief and fear. Perhaps it’s time I dug a little deeper and found a way to let it out again.
Yes, perhaps it’s time.
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