Meh

photo courtesy of society6.com

The internet is filled with inspirational quotes. One common theme in these quotes seems to be the idea that in order to find a career path that will truly make you happy, you just need to find a job that falls in line with your passions, and you're in business. You know that whole "do what you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life" deal. (Fun fact: while finding that picture I learned that the actual quote is "Find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life" and it was said by Harvey Mackay). Well that's all fine and dandy, but what if you're not passionate about anything? 

Everybody around me has always had very obvious passions. Some of them are career related (my dad is an evolutionary biologist and he is clearly passionate about research), some of them aren't (my mom runs marathons like it ain't no thang), but the passions are clearly there. In high school, I was surrounded by people who were throwing themselves into what they were doing because they loved it. Two a day practices and club teams during off seasons for the athletes, musical groups like community band and drum corps for the musically inclined, countless other clubs for whatever someone's little heart desired. Basically if someone was super amped about something, there was a way for them to roll with it. I did band and played some sports, but I was never like "OH HOLY HOT DAMN THIS IS MY SHIT". I was more like "meh". 

The same thing happened in college. My Facebook feed was filled with people being like "OMG I AM SO PASSIONATE ABOUT __________!!! LOOK HOW I AM SHOWING MY PASSIONS!!!!!!!! IT IS SO AWESOME I CAN'T EVEN HANDLE HOW PASSIONATE I AM ABOUT THIS SUBJECT!!!!!!!!!" Seriously, everyone was in some sort of club or doing some sort of internship. And me? I majored in Political Science and International Affairs. Not because I am incredibly passionate about politics, but because I thought it was interesting. I did Model United Nations (real life: 95% of the reason that I did it was because of the Mary-Kate and Ashly Olsen movie "Winning London". And I was pretty disappointed. MUN was definitely glamorized in that movie. I did not go to London, I did not get swept off my feet by a beautiful british aristocrat, basically the Olsen twins lied to me) and it was fun, but I wasn't as into it as the other kids were. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was really cool, but the majority of the people were like "AAAAHHHHH FUCK YEAH UNITED NATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!" And internships? I was all about doing an internship in D.C. the summer between my junior and senior year, but none of the options really jumped out on me and then I got super overwhelmed and just went on a European adventure instead. Which was WAY MORE FUN THAN AN INTERNSHIP, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. So yeah. Everyone in college was all "OHMUHGAWD I LOVE THIS!!!!!" and I was like "meh". 

Now college is over, and a shitload of the people that I graduated with have turned their passions into careers. The most obvious example of this are the teachers. Excluding Cameron Diaz's character in "Bad Teacher", people who teach are obviously passionate about their jobs because they are sure as shit not doing it for the money. But there are others too. I have friends who are taking the Foreign Service Exam (obvi they're passionate about politics), people who are nurses or have moved onto medical school, and other people are like "LOOK AT ME DOING THE SPORTING ACTIVITIES I LOVE TO DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (A chick I grew up with is a national nordic ski racer). Also there's actually a reason that I keep putting everything in capital letters. I feel like with every picture someone posts and status they update, they're shouting at me that I can't figure out what the hell I'm passionate about. And me? I graduated and was like "meh". So I moved to Hawaii and we all saw how well that turned out. (Sorry Frank).

So what am I trying to say here? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM PASSIONATE ABOUT. There's definitely stuff that I like to do, but absolute passion? I guess the only thing that I can think of that comes close to that level of emotion is traveling. What else do I like? I like politics (duh) and I like making people laugh. GOT IT. I'M GOING TO BE A STAND UP COMEDIAN WHO PERFORMS ON AIRPLANES AND MAKES A LOT OF JOKES ABOUT POLITICS. 

Can you tell that thinking about the future sort of overwhelms me? Appreciate your passions people, because when you're 23 and haven't quite found them yet…………its scary bananas.