Pursuing your Passion
Have you ever heard someone say find the job you love to do and you’ll never work a day in your life? Easier said than done.
I have always struggled to find that passion. Early in my career I thought I knew what I wanted, money, prestige, responsibility, leadership. While there are times in my corporate career where I have been in love with what I was doing, and other times I didn’t. One thing I realized is achieving results and advancing will not give me passion in what I am doing. I had begun to believe I wouldn’t find a job I’m passionate about because my passions all existed outside of work.
Woodworking
Cooking
Writing
Woodworking
My small shop just the way I like it, filled with dust.
I started a business to fuel my woodworking addiction. Initially I thought I would make small things, sell them locally on Facebook Marketplace or on Etsy so I can earn a little side money for tools. I tried that and failed. Those mediums are hyper competitive and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoy working with clients and making custom furniture. I love the design part of a project, and you don’t get that when you are batching out 20 of the exact same thing. There is no customer interaction. I don’t get to build my brand. But most of all, with that approach I did not get the opportunity to try something new. In the past year I have become a much better woodworker because I’ve been doing new things, buying new tools, using new technics that I never would have if I hadn’t had a push to improve.
Formalizing my business has lifted woodworking’s priority in my life which has been great for my mental health. I love being in the shop. I love building and working with my hands. It is calming. Imagine that, being calmed and relaxed by work. Now there are pieces of running a business that aren’t as fun, but overall it doesn’t feel like work to me. Woodworking isn’t a job. Building furniture is as big a pleasure for me as it is for my clients to see a finished piece in their home.
Cooking
Fresh rosemary bread, my wife’s favorite.
Cooking was going to be my first business. Initially, I set out to create a food blog. I wrote started by compiling and writing recipes I had made over the years. I started making food, plating food, and would take pictures of my food to practice but I stopped short of a launch. I was intimidated by two things. One, starting a website/blog. It’s intimidating when you start researching all of the blog options. There is so much information about starting blogs online that I hit analysis paralysis and I couldn’t make a decision. Then I got in my head. I didn’t think I had it in me and didn’t want this to be yet another hobby I had to maintain.
I didn’t pull the trigger. Plus, this was back in 2020 at the height of lockdown when everyone was pivoting. Cooking was a hot topic with new entrants in the space popping up hourly. I knew competition would be high and I didn’t want to grind away at my computer to get ahead. At the time I was already sitting in front of my computer too much and wanted to get away so I leaned towards woodworking over food blogging. Granted, 6 months into my woodworking business I’m back on the computer blogging, but that fuels a different passion.
Writing
Before woodworking, before cooking, back when I was a kid I loved reading. I read a ton, and when I say a ton I mean it. In elementary school we would have challenges called reading bingo. The bingo sheet would have different genres making up the squares. The goal was to get a bingo and you would earn a prize. Naturally, I asked what our prize would be if we did a blackout (filled out every square). If we did the teacher would take us out to lunch. That year we had reading bingo once a trimester and I went to lunch with the teacher 3 times.
I have always loved books and I have always had the desire to write my own stories. Fast forwarding a few years but still in elementary school I remember writing a short story for an assignment about the adventures of a squirrel. It was probably terrible, but I loved it. The fact that I could create a world with my words that others could see was mesmerizing to me. Unfortunately, by middle and high school I fell out of the reading and writing habit, partially because I was a boy and boys are supposed to like science and math not reading and writing. Stupid cultural thing.
Jumping ahead back to 2020. I was finishing up my MBA and as part of my MBA I read and wrote tons. The best part about it, I had the opportunity to talk about what I read and wrote with a group of wicked smart, talented people. I graduated in August, 2020 and took a little break, but by the end of the year I started picking up books again. Not leadership or management books this time, but fun books, stories, tales, adventure, mystery. It was thrilling. One month I wrote down that I read 6 books, over one a week. After all that reading it made me remember that time long ago when I wanted to tell stories.
In March of 2022 I launched this blog to tell stories.
The stories contained in this blog are not fiction, but they are stories. They are my story. The intention of the blog is to help others learn from my experience. I share tips and tricks about woodworking, business, and life, but I have an ulterior motive. This blog is practice. The only way to get better at an activity is to practice. To improve my writing I have to write. I keep a journal, that helps, but that journal is for me. I don’t share it. I don’t receive feedback on it. I often don’t even read it back.
Boy do I read this back. Editing is the most important part of writing. It’s easy to ramble on, it’s hard to make a point. I’m a work in progress, but I’m getting better because I have committed myself to writing 1 to 2 articles a week. If people read them, great, if receive feedback, even better, but the best part is I am practicing and improving. Really, I am writing for myself so one day I can take the plunge and write one of my many book ideas.
The Point
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I know, I just talked about how I’m becoming a better writer and I made you suffer through that long rambling story, but hey, this is my blog and this article is more for me than you.
The point of all this is do what you love. I love woodworking, cooking, and writing. I’m passionate about them. I want to get better so I practice all three every day and as I do so all three become a bigger part of my life. My hope is one day I’m able to dedicate most of my working hours to these activities. For now, that is not the case. I work for a company. We do great things to help people and I have a team that I enjoy working with. There’s nothing wrong with my job, in fact many people would love to be in the position I am in and yet, I’m spending my free time building my own business. I’m improving my writing. I’m becoming a better woodworker. I have a dream that some day those two things will carry me far. I can be independent. I can leave my mark on the world. Leave behind tangible embodiments of my life for future generations to appreciate.
And I’m here to say, if I can do it, so can you. Pursue your passion. Find the thing you love and spend time on it. You have to make sacrifices in other areas of your life but it will be worth it. The biggest driver that got me over the analysis paralysis hump to start my business was because I did not want to have regrets later in life. I did not want to look back and say “I wish I would have tried.” I did try. I am trying. Will I make it? Time will tell but ultimately it doesn’t matter because I tried.