The Truth Of Searching For A Passion ~via @LateBloomerTravel on Instagram
Beth is a dear friend, via a childhood friend... her loving, adoring, and supportive husband David. I adore them both and place them in my top five loving couples who I respect and admire.
I retired from working a few years ago and like many people fear I, too, didn’t know what to do next. I had spent my adult life raising kids, caring for parents, working together shoulder-to-shoulder with a loving husband, trying to reach and break goals for success in our business. However, one day I took a look around to find that my kids were launched, my parents were off to another world and our business had been sold. Lucky girl? Thank goodness my husband is still here!?!
So, what next? Ah…. I never really had a hobby. In fact I was so busy worrying about everyone else that I didn’t even have a “like” much less a passion. What to do now? First thing to do when I don’t know the answer to a question is “Google” it. Right? And I did. Here’s what I found:
How to Find Your Passion and Live a Fulfilling Life – Lifehack
Ok, that’s a good start! I went down the list one by one. But no help…
Ok, enough you say. I get the point. I was really working hard at this “seeking a passion” thing and then Covid hit. Just like everyone else, I got grounded…punished, put in my room for the year with only take out for dinner. It feels the same as when I was banished to my room for a week in high school for staying out too late, except I didn’t get my phone taken away. AND, this punishment is lasting way too long.
Let me out of here
All is not lost because, I did get to try a few new things. I watched way too much television, walked on the beach in New Jersey in the cold using my over-the-ear headphones for warmth and learned to host a weekly socially distant family dinner in our backyard.
Perhaps I’m a rather lazy Francophile as the French culture thrills me. Feeling that, I enrolled in an online intermediate Zoom French class at a local university after killing it at Duolingo (an app) only to become a drop out after my brain exploded on week five of the zoom class. With only two students in the class and having to answer every other question while speaking only in French AND the other student had lived in Paris for two years (no fair!), I dropped out. I guess Duolingo for six months didn’t compare. I just couldn’t think that fast. I would get so anxious the night before, as if politics and Covid statistics wasn’t making me crazy enough. I just didn’t have the “right stuff.”
I bailed. Simultaneously, taking piano lessons online and actually playing with both hands until the French class brain implosion happened… my brain just stopped. And then I found my true happy place.
It’s always the water.
My Summer Love
In my exploration of chasing a passion, I realized it was here all the time!
Travel – LateBloomerTravel is the logo for my life as it is now. I am a Bloom. I am definitely late to the game. And I love to travel. I thrive on change. Everyone knows I have no fear of moving. We have moved a zillion times in the last 15 years. It’s because I like change. Something happens inside of me when I get to see new places, people and the way their world is so different from mine.
It is how I learn and grow. I always take a little bit from the adventure home with me and incorporate it into my life. As a Global Citizen want-to-be, I adore seeing the city’s, town’s and country’s differing architecture. And that brings me to my next passion.
Design. I find interior and architectural design thrilling. Always looking up to see the details of a house, a store or a building and pointing it out to whomever will listen. Scrolling through Houzz, Pinterest or Architectural Digest could be a sideline. It’s so much fun to explore the options of Interior Design and watch the ideas just click together like a jigsaw puzzle. I am a big fan. But then you ask, what does one do while traveling and admiring the sights and designs of things? Well of course, that leads us into the last passion.
Taking pictures– Always seeing an interesting angle, object, person or scene to shoot and then stopping to etch it’s photographic memory in my phone and the posting it to share on a social media platform brings great joy. Sharing these moments make it more special then just keeping it to myself. It doubles the enjoyment if someone else gets to see it. Why not study photography? I’m glad you asked.
Carrying around a camera, calling myself a photographer, seems like a job rather than a joy. I already have a severe case of analysis paralysis, What will I do with all these pictures? I don’t know, either. Now you see my point.
The aim of my blog is to share with you. To hear your passions. To tell my story of chasing and what I may find along the way. I’ve already been on some great trips and some not so great ones. I hope you will join me on my ride: follow me on Facebook or on Instagram. I don’t Tweet to much, but maybe that will come in time. Until next time. Be well and Stay safe!
