Hunting for the Heart of It

As I began to come up with ideas for my third blog (both in the terms of the number of posts and times I’ve attempted to start blogging), I found myself with a bit of writer’s block.

With my last post about what I’m looking for in an apartment, I sort of went off-topic when it comes to the “heart” of what I’m aiming for… which I believe is for me to reignite the passion I once had for writing.

About a week-and-a-half ago, I caught up with my aunts who also live in New York (one of them was the one who allowed me to crash at her place until I found mine) since I haven’t seen them since the holidays and I wasn’t sure if they were still around since they’ve been spending their pandemic lockdown and quarantine away from it all at our family beach house down at the Jersey Shore.

As we began talking about work, my apartment prospects and just life in general, I began to talk about my blog because we began to discuss how sometimes people tend to lose the love they have for their passions once it becomes works — which is what happened to me.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t have any qualms against my employers or where news media has gone these days (which can be a whole story in itself at a later point), but for some people, once they start to make money off of their passions, they can lose their spark. And that happened to me.

You see, I love writing. Not just as an art form but also as the idea of storytelling through the written word, too. And I don’t want to toot my own horn but I’ve been told in the past that I was a great writer. And it was my knack for writing that had me fall in love with it. In middle school, I literally wrote a 300-page fantasy story double-sided inside of a small 3x5-inch notebook because not only did I had a story to share but I just loved writing that much. Whenever there were essays, poetry assignments or other written works due for homework, I didn’t fret about them because I enjoyed doing them. Whether by pen-and-paper or keyboard-and-computer, writing was something that brought me joy.

It’s the reason why I went into college with a degree in writing before switching to journalism. But once I began to write for a living, that’s when the passion began to fade.

I wasn’t writing for the style, narrative or even the sake of writing itself — I was writing for profit. Business, if you will. Stories are what got you paid. And they weren’t in any shape or form works of “art” but “products” my company was selling to its audience. I found myself writing about stories I couldn’t even care less about but because it was clickable stuff that drew people’s attention or just content for the sake of content. There were a few instances that I even found myself writing clickbait, which is something no content creator (or at least one with maybe some shred of dignity) wants to find themselves doing.

While I was writing for work, I tried several times to write for fun but I couldn’t. Whether it was trying to start a blog for the first time, writing a poem from scratch or revising one of my short stories from college, I didn’t enjoy it. My mind had begun to associate writing with work, and simply put, it sucked. You know that feeling when you eat one of your favorite childhood snacks before realizing that it doesn’t taste as good as you remembered or when you’re looking forward to wearing your favorite shirt only to find out that it doesn’t fit anymore? That was the feeling.

I couldn’t find myself just sitting down and start jotting out ideas freely because there was a thought in the back of my head that kept asking “What’s the reward?” I wasn’t getting paid to write what I wanted to write, so why do it? Why write when you’re not getting anything for it? What’s the reward? That was the question I have the hardest time answering.

Notice how I said “have” instead of “had”? It’s because even as I’m writing this very sentence, I’m still asking myself that question.

Currently, I’m in a position with my career that I don’t do a lot of writing to earn my paycheck, so bit by bit I’ve been trying to get back into writing again to reignite the spark. And, to be honest, it’s been challenging.

Though I’m beginning this blog and writing a bit more for the fun of writing like I used to, I’ve been finding myself going into these projects with a business mindset. “How can I get paid for doing this?” “How can I profit off of this hobby?” “What’s the reward?”

And that’s the other thing too that I’ve been struggling with — trying not to jump into these projects with the idea of making money.

My aunts were the people who told me this one. If you jump into something you love doing or that you’re quite good at with the focus to make money off of it, then that’s a surefire way to lose the joy. The passion.

This is something I’ve been struggling with because I would see these people — people my age even — who are making good money and even careers from writing and creating content, so I would think to myself “If they can do it, so can I.” So, I would hop into these things with the thought of getting paid for them but quickly realize how awful it is because I’m just trying to make a quick buck or another income stream. I wasn’t writing for the joy or sake of writing, and even worse: I wasn’t doing it for me.

Writing was my joy and passion, and no one else’s but mine. It still can be my passion but I have to remember every time I go into the next post that I’m not writing for a get-rich scheme nor am I writing for the pageviews and clicks — I’m writing for my joy and for myself.

So is there anything that you can learn from me after this ramble? Maybe.

Look, if you’re really passionate about something, don’t let me or anyone stop you from doing what you love doing — whether it be dancing, helping progress underdeveloped societies or writing like me. But even if you’re skillful in your passions and believe you can earn some cash from them or others tell you could get paid from it, don’t forget about the heart of it all: joy.

Your passions are your pride and joy, so if you do want to build a career from them, remember that it’s not how much money you make or how many followers you have while doing what you love… it’s about how much of your heart is still in what you’re doing that truly matters.