On losing your passion (and finding it again)

I grew up a writer. One of my happiest memories is of “publishing” story books we’d written on craft paper at school. My favourite part was workshopping. Here, other fourth-graders read what we’d written and gave us ideas to improve it before we switched on the printer and got the coloured pencils out to make our creations into actual, physical books.

Fast-forward fifteen years and I was loving my first web job, writing CD-ROM voice scripts and brochureware websites, and with a work history that included copywriting print brochures, ads, and direct mail.

Fast-forward another twenty years and all I wanted to do was stab myself in the face.

What makes us lose a life-long passion? Life itself. Mine was certainly no more dramatic than any one else’s — some struggles, some wins, some losses.

Writing had always been the only way to make my voice heard not by others, but by myself. It was the means to thinking, to understanding and making sense of the world. It created order, provided relief, delivered reassurance.

But then one day I realized my belief in the power of writing had ended.

Online, writing has been reduced to a popularity contest. Formulas win. It’s not creative, it’s prescriptive. Restrictive. “Users” don’t want a coloured storybook read aloud by a loved one; they want the commodity of “content”: infinitely scrolling, sharable, seo-optimised strings of words that position the author (or sharer) as a leader, despite the fact that no one actually reads any of it. What we publish today is forgotten tomorrow. None of it has any impact.

And IRL, I’d discovered that words meant nothing. What mattered was actions. All the rest was just talk.

So I was done. As I faced this fact, resigned, packed my things and left for Colombia (ESL teaching was my only other qualification, and the only other thing I thought I could do), I realized this wasn’t the beginning of this feeling. I wasn’t losing my passion. It was already long-gone. I could feel the loss, sure. But I couldn’t do anything about it.

Pack. Plane. Champagne.

I had no Spanish, which was fitting: I had nothing to say anyway. Without writing I had no voice. I could no longer make sense — but then the world had proven itself senseless.

I had no friends, but then I had nothing worth telling anyone beyond what a gerund is, or how conditionals work. My contacts with friends at home were reduced to whatsapp exchanges, the occasional email, maybe three or four Skype calls in five months.

Without writing, I may as well have not existed.

But I did. Colombia worked differently than Australia. So did the classroom. I was learning everything from scratch. True, it felt like half my brain had been removed — where there had been words was now empty space—but the other half of my brain was getting stronger every day. It learned to work alone, without words, and love it.

In this time, interpreting myself and the world became an inarticulable act. Where I’d always made sense at the language level, now it happened at the primal: my lizard brain did the work, and did it much faster. It connected who I was with what I did and left no room for argument.

Things fell into place as they never had before.

Fast forward one year and I was back in Australia, but still without the writing. I still had nothing worth saying. Words were still worthless.

Except in the classroom.

Language students crave words. They demand them. They know that without them they won’t be able to express themselves, even though they also know that they will never be able to express themselves in English the way they do in their native languages.

Language is a representation of the self, and of the culture of which we are part. As Colombia fostered different aspects of me, so Australia nurtures different aspects of my students. They must abide by the rules of English if they are to make sense here, and make sense of themselves here. But they cannot be other than themselves. So the drive to express their truest selves — from hopes to jokes — is what pushes them to learn. My job is just to help them connect.

You can see where this is heading: one day I woke up and realized I didn’t think writing was a waste of time any more. The passion is back, but now it’s deeper and more personal. Now the passion’s in my lizard brain, and it sees things differently.

Using words is an act. Writing is meaning.

If I hadn’t let go of my passion, I’d never have reached this point. That’s what I want to tell you here: if your fire goes out, let it happen. Maybe it’s out for good, and you’ll have another loss to add to your life’s collection.

But maybe not.