Crimes of Passion: Three Common Misconceptions

I have to be honest with you,  I've committed crimes of passion.  No, I have never killed or even hit someone in am act of passionate rage.  I do not lead a life of that kind of crime. However I've come to realize I've had some pretty large misconceptions about this thing called passion... of the non-romantic variety.   

• Misconception number one: A passion is something you automatically are aware of. 

For a while, in my adult life,  I was struggling to figure out what my passions were. I liked and even loved a lot of things, but I didn't have that one thing that despite not wanting to do anything else, I'd want to do that. That is, until I discovered knitting.

I say discovered knitting, but really I had known about it since I was a kid. My grandma even tried to teach me but I was too young and impatient to learn much about needle crafts. She taught me to crochet, and I liked that for a while, but gave up on it. So, one day as I was scrolling through etsy, I decided, hey, I could probably make that cheaper! So, I called up my friend to teach me how to knit, and as they say the rest is history. When I first picked up that pair of needles and knitted my first row,  I was ecstatic.  Something came over me and I wanted to knit all the time. In that first lesson my friend taught me how to knit and purl. She was going to teach me more the next time we got together but, I just couldn't wait that long so, I logged on to YouTube and went wild.

 I tell you this to tell you that you are not born knowing your passions or what you may be good at. And, there could be something you tried when you were younger that you didn't appreciate then, that is your passion now. Of your not born knowing, how do you discover your passions?

1. Try new things. This is cliché for a reason. Trying new things is the only way to truly discover whether or not something is a passion. If it's not, at east you learned a fun new skill!

2. Delve deeper into things you are already interested in. For instance, I've always been interested in fashion and home decor, but not enough to be an interior decorater or a high fashion designer. However, there are loads upon loads of things i can knit for me, my friends, my family, and I can maybe even open up a shop one day.

• Misconception number two: You don't have to be dedicated

When I was younger, I knew that I had a passion for reading and writing. Don't get me wrong, I still love reading and writing, but my passion is no where near as strong as it used to be. When I was younger,  I would describe the world around me as if from the pages of a book. The problem was that I rarely ever wrote these things down. In high school, I'd still write occasionally and I'd write some pretty embarrassing poems. Then, i got a boyfriend and i slowed down drastically.  I'm not saying that it's his fault, or that you can't have a significant other, that's just what happened to me. In college,  I barely wrote for fun at all, excepting my blog. In short, I became lazy. I didn't use my passion. Sure, I wrote papers for school, but that was it. By not using my passion, not only did I loose some of my talent for it (fiction is hard!). I knew I had a passion for writing, but knowing is not enough. I needed to act on it while it was strong so I didn't decrease my passion.

• Misconception number three: You don't have to try/learn your passion. 

You hear about all these people that have played the (insert musical instrument here) since they were three, and they're a prodigy.  I took all of these and was under the impression that if you have a passion, you have had to be able to do it since you were a child,  and that it was something that you just automatically knew how to do. Both of these things cannot be farther from the truth. You can discover new passions at any time in your life. And, like anything else, to do your best, you'll need/want to learn everything you can about it. For instance, with knitting, I didn't develop that passion until I was 20, and I had to learn how to do it. I am still learning new techniques and stitches all the time. Your passion will not be something you just know how to do, it will be something that you will learn about constantly.

If you know what your passion is, take time to really work on it and develop it.

If you don't know what your passion is,  I suggest you start trying new things related to things you are already interested in. Take time to discover what you are passionate about, it will change your life.