The twenty step guide to finding your passion

Welcome to this step-by-step guide to finding your passion. I have put in a lot of research, so let’s dive right in.

Step 1: You are an idiot.

Step 2: I can’t believe you still fall for stuff like this.

Step 3: Anyway, now that you are here, let me give at least throw in a definition. Passion isn’t creativity’s rapture. Not work’s hooker. It’s adventure’s company. Wild, but also monotonous, doubtful, and annoying.

Step 4: Passion is a shoe bite.

Step 5: Let’s get started.

Step 6: Most of us go about preparing for the adventure all wrong. We look for signs: Job sucks donkey balls, find passion. No one paying attention to your Fu Manchu, find passion. Your soul hasn’t taken a dump in 5 days, find passion.

Step 7: Second mistake: We ask for directions: “Which way to the mountaintop?”

Step 8: Our understanding of passion is backward. We start with the end in mind. And adventures are rarely about the end. They are about discovery.

Step 9: The difference between adventure and passion is the expectation. Whatever you are expecting your passion will do for you is what will kill your passion.

Step 10: You found your passion. It’s pretty much all of your childhood. And then you dropped it. Since then you’ve gone about searching for your passion like the proverbial old man who goes about searching for the dropped key: Where there’s light rather than where he dropped it.

Step 11: Get lost. No, seriously. Try so many things it scares the shit outa everyone around you. This amusement is the beginning of your adventure. But be careful. The moment you tie your feelings to people’s reactions, you may have started following a passion. Just not yours.

Step 12: I have no idea what the next eight steps will be. And most often this feeling is the only guide.

Step 13: You are lucky.

Step 14: You can afford to ask yourself if you are doing what you love without throwing up on yourself. And if you have an extra set of balls, you can even take a break and do weird shit, which I strongly recommend.

Step 15: To go everywhere but nowhere in particular. That’s what passion used to be. A private thing. Without a goal. A Meditation.

Step 16: But then we ran passion through the 21st-century self-improvement/Oedipus-Rexian blender. We mistook passion for talent. For achievement. And we started doing everything to get there and everyone’s like, “We get the point, Drake.”

Step 17: Just because you have the talent for something does not mean it is your passion. Wasted talent is not a bad thing. It’s an enlightened thing.

Step 18: If people tell you stuff like your passion will find you, ask them to say that again, but this time make sure you fill your mouth with water so when they say it again you can give their face the Triple-H experience.

Step 19: Passion is a process. Like living. It should have a life of its own. You don’t go about telling people how to live a good life. You live one. Find yours. And live it.

Step 20: Disappear into the mountains.