Mental Messages: What are You Passionate About?

If you had nothing else to do,what would you do?  When you have so much to do, you don't know what to do first, what do you wish you could do?

I've been thinking a lot about this as I work toward the end of five years back to school.  Five years.  I went 18 years dreaming about someday going back to school.  Back before my loans reached epic proportions, I used to sooth myself into thinking I could finish school and just click that off my list.  Finish school.  Check.  Things would return to where they were before.  I could keep my small struggling music teaching business and we'd ride happily off into the sunset.  Free time intact, emotions intact, and some pretty important hurdles jumped.

In those five years, my husband has gotten exactly one raise and I have lost all of my students.  I can tell you this.  After more than 20 years teaching music privately, I think I was done five years ago.  I'd lost the desire.  It had been a long time since I'd had that special student that made it seem worth it.  I'd lumbered along with just enough students for it to be annoying and too many to commit to anything else.  The truth is the business started dying 10 years ago, but that's another story.

I will be graduating in less than six months.  Anyone can do six months.  Now I realize that the original plan is not the plan.  I don't want to teach anymore.  I don't want to share my false passion for music.  I want to get a real job.  I want to obsess about my career.  I want to do well in my new life and leave the old one far far behind.  That's my passion for today.