Don’t run from your passions; chase them.

Way more than anyone needs to hear this, I need to write this. For myself.

I confess. I have been ignoring and neglecting my passions for years, and the void I feel as a result of that is finally coming to a head.

I love to write—no, scratch that, I NEED to write. It is the only thing in this world I have ever been truly good at. And by that I mean it’s the only thing I never had to work at or force; it has just always come naturally to me. Granted, it’s very a niche writing. I’m definitely not the world’s best technical writer, nor do I have a badge representing the grammar police department. I did temporarily deem myself an amateur poet when I was once published in my college’s literary magazine (two different poems in one issue, to my credit). But mostly I just like to write about what I know, hence why all my blog posts are entirely driven from my own life experiences. And it wasn’t until I started this blog that I realized how unfulfilled I was professionally.

I used to journal all the time when I was growing up. Though that stuff was more personal, I knew from my success in my English and Creative Writing classes at school that I could go somewhere with this if I really wanted to. And I definitely debated it, but I never could find an avenue that would support me financially, and that was something that did influence me when I started to plan my career. So I took a different route, telling myself I could still use my writing skills anywhere and would keep up with it outside of work too. Predictably though, that journal, once filled with pages of my thoughts and emotions, ended up being buried away in a box under my bed, collecting dust instead of words.

And for a little while, I thought I made the right choice for myself. I loved my first “big girl job” and I loved making [what at the time seemed like a lot of] money for myself. Two and a half years later, I quit that job because I wasn’t satisfied creatively, thinking it was the type of work I was doing there that was the problem. Today, two years in at another job in the same field, I find myself back to that place again: unfulfilled, unsatisfied and plain old unhappy.

Naturally this contempt revealed itself in my personal life, and it wasn’t until one of my best friends spearheaded a “friend-tervention” that I finally figured it out. She helped me see something I wasn’t seeing for myself. It wasn’t the companies or the managers or the salaries that were the problem; it was my complete disregard to follow my true passions. And I’m not just talking solely about writing. I also love to plan and organize, and spend every minute I can working with people and being on the move. Those are the things that give me life. And those are the things that I need to seek out in my career if I ever have any hope of discovering my place in this world.

I ran away from my passions because I genuinely thought I was chasing something better. But what I wish I had known was that, in doing so, I was also running away from myself. In this lifetime, our passions are our passions for a reason. They make up who we are and are there to guide us towards becoming the people we are meant to be. So, if you are in the process of figuring out your career, my advice to you is to follow your instincts—and your heart—and you’ll end up where you are supposed to be. But if you’ve already made the same mistakes I have and are trying to find the source of your restlessness, try looking inward on the dreams you used to have before other variables got factored in. As cheesy as it may be, starting this blog helped me find a piece of myself again, and I forgot how much I missed her. In fact, she is helping me find the courage to make other necessary changes in my life, no matter how scary they may be. So yes, I still have some work to do, but now that I am finally on the right path—and not just parallel to it—I can’t wait to see where it leads.