What is your passion?

I subscribe to a blog called "the simple dollar", its premise to share tips and ideas for leading a more frugal and thus less financially stressful existence. The post today focused on linking your spending to your passions and using these passions as a guide in making purchases. As are most of the articles, it is well-written and immediately applicable as well as thought provoking as far as what is important in life. It got me seriously thinking about what my own passions are.

These last few months (years perhaps, if I really want to be technical about it), I've kind of been in a sort of denial of myself as far as my passions and pursuits. While I'm not a big hobby person, one that's come for me lately is the desire and passion for knowledge.

In preparing for the state dept exam, I've discovered just how much I DON'T know and whether it's because I either missed it in school (not likely) or just haven't devoted the time to learning outside of my daily demands, I'm now almost manically focused on filling the holes (the large gaping variety) in my young adult education. For the most part it's a lot of history and geography, having just never really taken the time to think about on a real level what life is like in other regions or how the maps came to be drawn the way they are or where and why exactly there is so much conflict and what it means in the grand scheme of things. I've been so focused on the here and now for most of my life, that this opportunity to step outside myself and learn for the sake of truly understanding the world is refreshing, enlightening and intimidating.

It makes me wonder what I've spent so much of my time doing otherwise and I think a lot of it has been thinking about the future and things that I can't control. I get so wrapped up in my head thinking about what if, that while I have done some cool things, I so rarely stop to live in the moment and reflect on what it all means and how great life can actually be. I am a reflective person, but cynically so, unrealistically downplaying or overplaying what I've done. It sometimes feels as if I'm centered slightly askew of reality.

This is a growing up process that is necessary and while I have a long road ahead, it's invigorating because I can see (for once) glimpses of where I want to be in my future and what I need to do to get there.