by Jennifer Barlow
I recently had a much-needed vacation, and was lucky enough to visit Turkey, England, and France this summer. My sister-in-law and her family live in England, and it was so nice to stay with them and catch-up with family that lives so far away. 
While visiting, I was able to spend some quality time with my five-year-old nephew, Peter. …And OK, let me just tell you, I was absolutely FLOORED by how smart this little boy was when it came to airplanes!!! Peter doesn’t just like airplanes; he doesn’t just enjoy them and think that they are cool… he is down-right, full-on, obsessed with airplanes and everything that has to do with them!!! Peter collects everything from toy airplanes, to boarding passes, plastic airline cups, and luggage tags. He talks about airplanes all day long.
I was truly mesmerized at how much this little 5 year old really knew about them. For example, he corrected me when I told him my flight from Ankara, Turkey to England was 3 hours long. He said, "It couldn’t have been 3 hours. It would have been a longer than 3 hours because Ankara is further away than Istanbul, and a flight from Istanbul to England is 3 hours…" I was really caught off guard to be corrected by a five year old kid; but to give him credit, he was right. The flight was actually 3 1/2 hrs, to be exact.
Peter also asked my husband which airlines we had already taken and the airlines we would be taking to travel back home. My husband replied, "Well, from France to England, we took British Airways. From England to Chicago, we will also take British Airways. And from Chicago to Nashville, we will take American Airlines. To that, Peter responded, "You mean American Eagle, not American Airlines." Again, Peter was right; we would be flying on American Eagle- not American Airlines.
Peter could also spout-off the exact airlines that would be the first to receive a newly manufactured and distributed airplane (the A-830…) The stuff this kid knew about planes was pretty amazing.
My nephew’s in-depth understanding of airplanes made him seem like a kid-genius, and I was absolutely fascinated with his passion. In fact, I was so inspired by him and his love of airplanes, that it made me wonder about my own passions. What was I passionate about? What did I love?
Well, I told myself, I love my husband, my family, my friends, and my puppies… but those are obvious.
So …What else do I love, I asked myself? Well, I told myself, I love the water, watching movies, and eating chocolate… but are those things really considered passions just because I "love" them? Would anyone consider me a genius because I am a can snarf-down an entire 4 lb bag of M&M’s all by myself? Or because you can find me at the movie theaters every Saturday night with my husband? Ha ha, I wish it was that easy to be a genius! So, then what was it that I love to do, love to talk about, love to learn about??!
These questions made me realize how interests differ so greatly from hobbies. In my opinion, an interest is something you enjoy (like water, movies, and chocolate), but they require no skill or talent. Hobbies, on the other hand, are activities that require talent, skill, and knowledge. Hobbies require training and require practice. Hobbies give a person skills, and skills make a person unique and interesting. Ultimately, having skills are what sets a person apart from others, and, in a sense, makes a person more valuable.
I found confirmation to my theory about hobbies, skills, and value at my 9-5 job. My boss recently hired an "expensive" New York PR Director and PR Assistant. It’s funny because they are "supposedly" experts at what they do, and yet it seems as though every hour I have an urgent email from them begging for my help with some relatively simple PR project, like: adding a logo to a photo; resizing an image, changing a photo’s resolution for web-purposes, or color correcting photos. They ask for my help because they don’t know how to do it, and do not care to learn how to do it for themselves.
Anyway, what is so hilarious to me about all of this is that the PR Director and her Assistant apparently think that I am some kind of techie-genius!! And trust me, I am far from any sort of genius… but it is so funny to me how smart they think I am when I email them the thing they so desperately need, but don’t know how to do themselves! And now, within the office, I have been the “go-to” person when making price lists, flyers, and work invitations.
The only reason that I know how to do these things and can apply it to my professional-life is because digital scrapbooking has taught me the concepts within the graphic software programs (Photoshop and Photoshop Elements) to do the tasks they need help with! Learning these two programs was such an easy process for me because #1: I thought it would be fun to learn how to digitally scrap, and #2: I had great training, making these software programs easy to learn (thanks Mom!). By being interested in a hobby and learning a lot about it, I have come to benefit from digital scrapbooking in more ways than I ever imagined!
And to be honest with you, I don’t really care about all the compliments or praise. To me, that isn’t really what’s important. What I do like, however, is doing something that I love, and spending my time at work on projects that let me be more creative; rather than just answering the phones all day!
Peter, my job, all of it… has taught me a valuable lesson: I believe that everyone is capable of anything that they really believes in. I think that everyone should empower themselves, by investing in themselves! I think that everyone should commit to learning how to do something -anything- that they think they might enjoy; and learn how to do it really, really well.
That’s all it takes; finding something you think is interesting and just doing, practicing, training, learning, and just sticking with it until you’re so great at it that others are FLOORED by your genius. That is what passion is all about.
….What is YOUR passion??
Jennifer
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