When Passion Becomes Obsession

When Passion becomes Obsession

 

  We all have passions. We all have things that we are passionate about and often they are things that others don't understand. For those of our friends who do not understand our passions, they seem like obsession. But are they really an obsession, or are we just devoted to the things that we love, and over time our passions change, we learn to love and do new things. Sometimes those passions are complementary to earlier loves and at other times they displace their predecessors. It is the cycle of life, we experiment, we prosper, we grow bored and we move on. 

  

  For many years my driving passion was geocaching, and I still like to get out occasionally, but it doesn't seem to hold the same spot in my heart that it used to. I found a resurgence in my love for it when I discovered photography. I found them to be complementary hobbies, geocaching would take us to wondrous spots and I could capture them on camera for future reference. For a time I was in the prospering stage again. Then a new passion arrived, writing. 

 I had used the photos from geocaching in the past and developed a blog that I updated in a hit or miss fashion. It seemed that sometimes I was too busy doing to take the time for the telling. Then, about six months ago, the writing bug bit me, hard. I started on a novel and the next thing you know I had two novels written in the first draft stage, but my blog still suffered. it seemed that words on the computer were words that I didn't get in my novel. A challenge from the writing group that I joined changed all of that. The challenge was simple, to start a blog or to return to one we already had. The twist was, that our first topic was randomly generated. I posted that one a couple of weeks ago. Now I am back to writing on my own terms. And that brings us to the obsession.

 Starting on November 1, writers all around the world are taking part in NaNoWriMo. If you are wondering what that is, you are not alone. It stands for Nation Novel Writing Month, and is a challenge to write 50,000 words in one month on a novel. It has been going on for a long time, but it was not until I started writing a novel and looking for community involvement that I discovered it. So, for the next month I will be chained in the basement at a desk, hammering on the keys of the computer in a quest to challenge myself to write a novel in a month.   I think that qualifies as an obsession, don't you. 

To all of my friends and family, I'll see you in December.