Today we welcome Eddy Thakur to lead the discussion on the porch!  He has some interesting thoughts on the number of passions a person can have; can you have too many? This should be an interesting discussion! Take it away, Eddy!

There was a time when I had no passions in life. In fact, I had no passion for life itself. I was depressed and lacked the vitality to get excited about anything. This is not a good place to be.

A passion can give a sense of meaning to your life. It can be anything, an art form, sports, movies, books, travelling, environment, changing the world, helping the needy or collecting coins; it doesn’t matter how trivial or profound. As long as you are passionate about something, you can look forward to every day and be filled with vitality.

I’m happy that I’ve been able to turn my life around and find something to be passionate about. But now I have a different problem. Now I have too many passions!

Writing is my biggest passion. I began writing silly poems in college during boring lectures. I wrote song lyrics and short stories and now writing has become an image defining, soul healing, and mind-calming activity.

In college, I found another passion, in music. I played the guitar and sang in a rock band with a bunch of my friends. We weren’t very good but we were passionate and had a lot of fun while teaching ourselves to jam.

Two years ago I decided to chase my dream of becoming a writer. I wanted to focus just on writing and decided to forget about my other passions, at least for a while. Instead, I’ve acquired even more passions! I am interested in sketching and drawing comics and typography. I am also passionate about web design and using code in a creative way.

Now I’m confused; should I go for them all or just focus on writing? If I could find a way to combine all of them, I could create a nice little niche for myself. But what if in trying to do so much, I end up failing miserably in everything?

I can understand having many passions if all of them are just hobbies but I’m trying to make a living as a writer. That puts me under some extra pressure.

They say it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master any skill. So if we try to master too many skills at the same time are we dividing our limited time and delaying any chance of success? Or is this kind of thinking a sign of impatience?

Can having too many passions do more harm than good? Should we sacrifice some passions to achieve success in others? Does the extra pressure of paying your bills with income generated solely by your passion make things worse?

Photo credit: Davis Doherty