Can We Really Follow Our Passions, or Are We Too F*cking Tired?

Everywhere I go, people are burned out

Everywhere I go, people are burned out.

(GOD, DO I LIKE “BURNED OUT,” OR “BURNT OUT?” BIG DECISIONS.)

My friend B was here last night. Total babe. Has everything going for him. Except, he’s burned out. Been working for the same company for the past 10 years. Feels dead inside. But, doesn’t know what else to do.

My friend A said the same thing. Ready for a career change, now that he’s 40. But…what would he do?

My other friend, E, feels similarly. “I’ve been working my whole life and have nothing to show for it. What’s my passion? What’s my thing? If only I had some direction.”

I hear some variation of this every day. In my work teaching people how to set up joyful remote businesses they can do from anywhere in the world while actually loving their life (bye-bye social media, hello villa in France!), the biggest challenge is not “how to set up a remote business.”

It’s this: but, what do I want to do?????

That’s because if you’re t.h.i.s.c.l.o.s.e to saying “frig it, I’m taking the dog & going to London” (a wonderful book about a grown-up gap year away from your husband) that’s not the time when you want to keep being an accountant. Big life changes prompt big career changes. Just like you wouldn’t remodel half your kitchen, you don’t want to remodel half your life.

But then there is the all-pressing question: What’s my pivot? Now’s the time for me to “follow my passions,” but what if I don’t have one?

This is the grand sticking point.

This is where forward motion gets coated in tar.

And, you know what happens when you’re covered in tar?

You can’t see what’s right in front of your face. You can’t see the forest through the trees. You can’t see your own potential anymore.

The more time passes, the more irrelevant you feel. Useless; washed up; like last week’s chicken liver. It feels a little silly, trying to “become something you’re not” at an age when most of your peers are finally able to afford a BMW. And a house with fucking wreaths. And an endless supply of those subscription vitamins only rich people can afford. (Not to mention health care.)

It feels a little juvenile, galloping off to “throw away” your life and reinvent yourself. There’s a shame here. It’s almost humiliating. The people I’ve talked with seem embarrassed by their own ambitions.

Maybe that’s because they aren’t labeling it as ambition: they’re labeling it as failure.

As I wrote in my book, THE MIDDLE FINGER PROJECT:

Somehow quitting feels shameful, as if something is wrong with you, rather than with the thing you tried. But that’s like going to a restaurant and ordering the duck nards, only to discover that you actually hate duck nards. Does that mean something’s wrong with you?

No, it means you go to a different restaurant.

This is a call for us all to go to a different restaurant.

If you don’t like what’s on order in your current life, it’s time to make a reservation elsewhere.

That is called ambition—even if it doesn’t look like ambition. What is ambition, if not a commitment to your desires?

In order to be committed to what you want, you must be uncommitted to the things you don’t.

In this way, quitting is still a form of ambition, just badly branded. Quitting has a PR problem. If it were up to me, I’d advise everyone on this planet to quit now, and quit often, and start again, and again, and again, and again.

This is how I’ve been able to find my own self, as I’ve evolved and changed.

This is how you figure it out.

Or, as I like to say:

Finding yourself is a process, not a pony ride. You must start things without knowing if you’ll finish.

That, right there, has been key for me: letting go of the need to finish. To have all the answers right now. To try new things without an attachment to the outcome. To be SURE that something is a smart decision. (Says the girl poking a screwdriver into an electrical outlet.)

You know what I think?

We need to stop trying to make so many “smart decisions.”

And start focusing on making good ones, instead.

Smart decisions are the ones based in OH-SO-SENSIBLE logic: the reasonable, the rational, the practical ones. They’re the “I have a background in X, so it makes sense for me to do Y.” They’re the “I’ve invested so many years into my career, it would be a shame to give it all up.” They’re the “this isn’t really what I want to do, but it seems like the practical way forward.”

These are the decisions our parents taught us to make, the decisions our teachers taught us to make, the decisions society has taught us to make. The decisions our fear has taught us to make. ←THAT.

Good decisions, on the other hand—well, these are the ones you really want to make. The ones you’d do if you could do anything. The ones you’d do if life were a blank slate. The ones that make you excited to think about. The ones you’d do if you weren’t too embarrassed by all the things “wrong” with you: your age, your inexperience, the fact that you may very well have to take ten steps back.

Good decisions are the ones that feel good to make.

That seems obvious when I say it like that, doesn’t it? But, it surely isn’t obvious when you’re covered in tar.

Instead, it’s easy to convince yourself out of doing anything that brings you joy, because in our Puritan-esque third circle of hell, joy feels irresponsible.

But in order to figure out what you love, you can’t take the love part out of it. It must be essential to the thinking. Logic has no place when it comes to passion. And, that’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it?

• This telephone repairman, who worked in the industry for 25 years, now designs women’s shoes. (I LOVE THIS.)

• This medical receptionist left her “perfectly normal” office job to become a female locksmith.

• This restaurant manager became a food writer…and then went on to have a Netflix show.

None of these were practical decisions.

They were instinctual ones.

And———there is something to be said about respecting your own instincts.

Maybe what we really need to do is drop the P-word altogether: passion. That word is daunting, isn’t it? It gives us this almost unattainable standard; this expectation that, unless you are the happiest you’ve ever been, ever, ever, EVER, it isn’t a true passion.

But, I’m starting to wonder if passion is really just interest, branded well. Perhaps a little too well. Sometimes “finding your passion” feels a little pedestal-y, like going on an interview with Anna Wintour at Vogue. And, that’s intimidating as hell.

What if we all just committed to doing what interested us this week?

And then the next?

And then again, the following?

There’s no pressure if you’re just dabbling. And dabbling, my dear, is perhaps one of the most courageous things you can do, for it takes spunk to try new things. It takes nerve to enter a new room. And it takes pluck to ignore everyone who thinks you erratic, scatterbrained, flighty.

But, the dabbler has one thing going for them that most people don’t:

They aren’t covered in tar.

Maybe it’s not about finding “your big passion,” but rather being committed to sampling many.

After all, life sure is full of wonderful restaurants—and I want to try them all.