Between Ethan and Mark’s videos today and Seán’s videos just before and after his break, I’m thinking a lot about the idea of pursuing your passions.
It’s been a long time since I had something that I wanted to put all of myself into. The last time I felt that was when I was writing a lot as a teenager. The books I wrote absolutely consumed me, and all of my passion and all of my heart went into them.
I went to college to get an English degree with the hope that it would allow me to pursue my passion as a career, but the plan backfired. My mental illnesses became overwhelming, and I didn’t allow myself to take a break because I was scared I would lose my scholarships and be unable to go back, since my scholarships required me to be a full-time student for four continuous years. I was a good student, I got good grades, I graduated summa cum laude, but by the end, I just wanted it to be over. I was so far beyond my breaking point by the time I graduated that I couldn’t enjoy the fact that I was living out a goal I’d had since I was little by going to college. My anxiety had gotten so severe that I was having short-term memory problems, and I thought about killing myself every day. I was so tired. The only thing that kept me going was being terrified of failing - and not the failure itself, really, but the idea that people would think I didn’t try hard enough if I failed. So I pushed through, and as soon as it was over, I had a complete breakdown from which I’ve never fully recovered.
The breakdown, and the struggle leading up to it, caused cognitive changes that make it difficult to write. It used to come to me more easily than breathing - the words would flow and I just had to type quickly enough to keep up. Now, it’s a struggle to organize each sentence, and it’s much harder to write fiction than to just document my thoughts. I haven’t written anything significant in years. I miss it so much. I miss having something to pour my heart and soul into, something that I felt compelled to create as if it were my whole purpose.
I believe in pursuing your dreams, and I know it’s true you have to take risks and make sacrifices to make your dreams reality. I also know that if you don’t take care of yourself while you’re chasing those dreams - if you don’t acknowledge your own limits and you don’t let yourself rest when you need to - you can end up too exhausted to actually reach the goal, or so burnt out that you can’t even enjoy it when you get there. It’s so easy to get trapped in a place where you’re just making it through the daily struggle, and lose sight of what all that work is for.
For a long time, I’ve been drifting because I don’t know how to get back to pursuing what I love. I enjoy what I’m doing right now, but it doesn’t light a fire in my soul the way writing used to.
I want it back. I want something I can pursue with everything I have. I’ve tried over the last three years, and it hasn’t worked yet, but I want to keep trying. So this is my promise to myself that I’m not just going to give up on the thing that has always been my passion, even if I’ve been disconnected from it for a while.
Thank you, Ethan, Mark, and Seán, for saying exactly what I needed to hear exactly when I needed to hear it.
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