You don’t stumble on passion. It’s not like a meet-cute and you just pick up a paintbrush and poof you’re a painter. You have to try things. You have to expand your horizons. You have to learn what you like and don’t like. Trying things as an adult is haaaard. A lot of us decided somewhere along the line that we had to be perfect at everything we did. We focused on outcome and production. We learned not to value the developing of new skills but specializing and perfecting limited skills.

With this approach we limit ourselves and compartmentalize our skills into very limited silos. We decide we “aren’t good” at certain things. Not that we have un-developed knowledge areas or unexplored skillsets.

If we want to find a passion, we should start by focusing on things we find interesting. I’ve recently fallen in love with gardening. That evolved into gardening and composting. That evolved into limiting waste. I’ve learned so much and become so satisfied and engaged with these new skills and avenues of knowledge. I have paid zero attention to composting over the course of my life. Now I’m obsessed with it. In the early hours of the morning today I found myself strategizing my tomato planting setup for next summer. I’ve found a thing that interests me and gets me excited.

That is the crucial and often elusive thing in our adulthood – what interests and excites you? Not a lot, in all honesty. Making flowers that keep the bees and hummingbirds happy while adding beauty to the neighborhood makes me happy. Trying new things with bulbs and fertilizer and new plants makes me happy. Putting trimmings and treated food waste into my compost pile to regenerate into enriched dirt for future plants makes me happy. These are silly things in the grand scheme of the world – but finding something satisfying that adds happiness to my life is a rare and lovely thing we don’t often get in our adult lives.

Be curious about how new things happen. People love to share their skills and passions. Learn to do what interests you. Learn about your hormones or composting or writing a book or working from home or literally anything you could possibly want. Maybe you waste a couple hundred dollars for an online class. But maybe you learn something new that lights a fire of interest and you build new skills that you in turn can share.

Don’t limit yourself by creating expectations based in something other than reality. Try new things. Be curious. Learn about things you find interesting.