Finding my calling in life

I’ve always envied those people who have a fixed life plan. The ones who know from the start that they want to be a doctor/police officer/electrician or whatever. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that for me it’s never been that clear-cut.

And it’s not because I couldn’t find something that I’m interested in, it’s more that there are too many things… Given enough time, I can get interested in practically anything.

I recently read a super post by @denmarkguy in which he describes a period of time where he earned a living as a beachcomber (well worth a read). It got me thinking about my life’s journey and how I ended up where I am today.

As with all adventures, the journey of life is best tackled with chocolate in hand.

Dancing girl

Back when I was a child, I apparently told my father that I wanted to be a ballerina. I don’t remember saying that, but it MUST be true because he mentioned it in one of his newspaper columns. Everyone knows newspapers don’t lie. And yes, writing runs in the family.

Needless to say, the ballerina dream didn’t work out. As with many childhood crazes, it fell by the wayside when I discovered the next thing. In this case, it was synchronised swimming.

Yes really, synchronised swimming. I fell in love with this amazing sport, a mixture of swimming and dancing at the age of 9, and it was the centre of my life for most of my teenaged years. Far from being another childhood craze it became my “thing”, my passion, a major aspect in how I defined myself. I trained 6 times a week and even made it into the British national team. I would love to include a high quality picture here but unfortunately that was before the days of Instagram, so you’ll have to be content with this blurry video.

Click here to see the whole thing


But even that didn’t last. I retired as a synchronised swimmer when I was 19. There were various reasons, but one of them was the horrible lack of UK funding for the sport.

I don’t regret giving it up. I had gone as far as I wanted to and it was time to move on to the next thing. By that point I had discovered acting and wanted to be a musical theatre star, and so the next chapter of my life opened. The auditions for drama school didn’t go so well, but it didn’t matter, because this was followed by periods of time as a lifeguard, a librarian, volunteering in Africa, studying to become an accountant, teaching English abroad, and translating.

If anyone’s into MBTI personality typing, then after that statement you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I’m INFP type. We have a hard time finding our place in the world because we don’t fit very well with the standard societal model. We’re highly creative, but also chameleons, hard to pin down because we’re so skilled in changing our colours to blend in. We’re pretty good at everything we try – which might sound like a positive thing, but in the long run it’s only so satisfying to be a jack-of-all-trades.

Master of none

After giving up synchronised swimming, it was hard for me to find something to replace it. I didn’t miss the sport itself, but I DID miss having a “thing” that was passionate about and that formed the centre of my life.

I had plenty of other interests (theatre, dance, music, yoga, hiking, language learning, to name a few) but none of them was powerful enough for me to want to devote my life to it. Rather I spent a lot of time being dissatisfied that there weren’t enough hours in the day to devote sufficient time to all of the things I had an interest in. Until recently, my list of “things to focus on” consisted of something like 8 items, but I couldn’t pick one that was more important than any of the others.

Anyone can tell you that it’s unsustainable trying to split yourself 8 different ways. I found myself getting really stressed out about it.

Becoming a writer

The change came in the last 6 months, when I first started earning money writing fiction. In the beginning, I worked as a ghost writer, so the things I wrote were published under a different name. However, it didn’t take me long to realise that it was a waste of effort writing things for someone else’s benefit, when I could be building my own writer portfolio.

Discovering Steemit was another step along the path. Although I’m still rather new here, it’s already become my favourite social platform and feedback and engagement here surpasses what I’ve experienced on other platforms. Even if I never become a Steem millionaire, it will have been worth it to become part of the community here.

Another big step – one that I took two weeks ago – was giving up my translation work. At the moment it’s on a temporary basis, but I’m hoping that my income from various writing projects will build enough that I won’t have to go back to it. I enjoyed translating, but not on the same level as I’m loving my new persona as a full-time writer.

My new passion

It’s been a gradual process, but something fundamental has shifted in the way that I regard my writing. I’ve thought of myself for a writer for a couple of years now, but writing was simply one of my many skills. Just another of the vibrant feathers in my cap.

But now, especially after having given up my main job to focus on writing, it’s grown to fill my life and become my passion.

And as that has happened, the other things that I thought were important have receded into the background. For example, it doesn’t matter any more if I practise my music every day or not, and I no longer feel bad if I don’t have enough time to revise my German vocab, because those things simply aren’t as important as my number one priority: writing. I'm so happy to have a passion again. I already feel more motivated and fulfilled because of it.

I’ve already heard stories of some of the people I’ve met on Steemit, but I’d love to hear from others. How did your life path bring you to where you are today? What’s your passion and did you have trouble finding it at first?

This is an original piece written for Steemit by @victoriakelly
I own all visual material used in this post.

If you’re interested in reading some of my fiction, you can find the latest episode of my serialised story here.

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