But what IS my passion?

Jan 28, 2021

“Just follow your passion!”

If I had a nickel for every book, article, or YouTube video that regurgitates this phrase, I’d be doing this right now…

I’m not writing this to tell you that following your passion is the secret to success and will lead you to a life like our friend Scrooge McDuck up there.

I think we can all agree that supporting ourselves and our family just by doing what we love every day sounds like the dream.

Before we figure out how to live off our passions in life, we have to figure out…

But what IS my passion?

Don’t get me wrong. There are tons of things I love doing that make me happy.

I love spending a rainy day sitting inside and reading.

I love enjoying a cold beer outside on a hot day.

I love taking long walks with my wife and our dog.

But my true passion in life? That’s deeper. That’s something you dedicate your life to.

Finding what we’re passionate about may be one of our hardest challenges in life. But if we don’t search for it, will we ever find it?

In this post, I want to share how I’ve found some of my passions over the years, in the chance it may help you find yours.

The slow cooker

In college, living frugally in a small apartment, I realized I had to stop eating out all the time and find a way to make myself food at home.

Someone told me to get a slow cooker to bulk-cook meals without a lot of effort.

That slow cooker was my gateway drug into the life of cooking. I perfected carnitas, french onion soup, and so much more in that Crock-Pot.

After reading a little too many “Slow Cooking 101” blogs, I decided I needed to try something new.

That turned into challenging myself to cook a steak at home. It wasn’t the best steak I had ever eaten, but hell, it was a fraction of what it cost at a restaurant.

After a while, I was reading recipes for fun, buying cast irons, tongs, and so much more … but most importantly, I loved seeing myself getting better and better at cooking.

10 years later, I have stacks of bookmarked cookbooks throughout our house, cook almost every single meal, and am now the designated “chef” for most family holidays.

n+1

After I got my first real job, I didn’t have a car, so I started biking to work out of necessity.

A couple of miles to and from to work led to biking on the weekends to pick up lunch or to meet up with friends.

That then led to longer weekend rides of 20-30 miles to see how I far I could go.

Now I average 5,000+ miles a year and am a full-fledged follower of the n+1 bike rule, where:

n = your current number of bikes

n+1 = the number of bikes you need to have a happy and fulfilled life 😂

The current favorite at one of my favorite climbs

On to the next one

I’ve been lucky to stumble into my passions of cooking and biking.

But over the past couple of years, I feel like there’s been one that I’ve been avoiding. One that I’ve been scared to pursue for some reason.

And it’s why you’re reading this…

Because, I love writing.

I first started writing by helping translate my Mom’s work emails from our native-tongue of Russian into English.

I wrote papers throughout high school and university, but it wasn’t something I loved doing (did any of us?)

Then, I somehow tripped and fell into the deep end of writing when I was put into a new position at my work at AppSumo. Suddenly, I was tasked with writing emails that went out to almost a million people a week 😳

After years of amazing mentorship (thanks to Noah, Chad, Neville and so many others) and trial and error, not only did I get better and better, my love of writing got stronger and stronger.

Since then, I’ve helped write and edit hundreds of blog posts, emails, books, and more for work and friends.

But … none of that has felt like me actually pursuing MY passion of writing.

Now, I’m here.

Writing this for you to read and enjoy :-)

As I reflect on how I’ve found my various passions in life, I’ve realized they are activities/hobbies that you:

LOVE doing
Strive to improve and get better at
Make something that you can’t wait to share with the world

Your passions likely won’t immediately be all of those things at once.

It may be something that you just sorta like doing, or something that you keep coming back to and enjoy seeing yourself get better at.

“Okay Anton, but what if I find that passion and it doesn’t help me dive into all that money like Scrooge McDuck?”

Well, I’m not there either, so let’s tackle things one at a time together.

If you’re like me and have something you’ve been scared to pursue and constantly put off (like I did with writing), I hope this inspires you to give it a shot.

If you’d like to join me on my journey of pursuing this passion…