What is your passion? Do you know it?
There was a time in my life where I completely lost sight of mine.

I want to share with you a bit of the bumpy road I took to living my passion, to show that it can be done and to provide encouragement and inspiration for anyone who wants to fuel the odyssey of discovering and living their dream.

“Vida!” Chiapas, Mexico

As a child I delighted in creating things. I loved to paint, loved making sculptures, and illustrated adventure books. I drew everywhere, I left mysterious symbols inked onto the fences and trees in my yard, I drew on my little sister, I took sharpie markers to the hallways of my house, down the walls, into my parents room; my liberated line of expression swirling around their lampshades and down into the insides of their shoes. They quickly put a stop to my full, creative expression on our house, but graciously and encouragingly gave me free range of my bedroom, of which I covered every square inch in drawings. I loved to create. I lived to create.

My room as a young teenager

Fast forward to my adult life after moving from Seattle to New York to experience boundless possibility in the big city… It was only seven years ago that I was very lost. I was treading water and doing what I could to stay afloat. I worked many dreadful jobs; I was a personal assistant for a business man’s personal assistant, a booker at a modeling agency which turned out to be a scam, I was a cocktail waitress at a sleazy vacuous club, and then a server at an upscale restaurant in SOHO with a permeating, toxic environment. I didn’t create anymore. I convinced myself that I had to do something more practical than art to make my living… but I was not living.

I fell into a deep depression. I felt devastatingly empty, scared and hopeless about the future and my mind was fogged with fear. Eventually I got fired from my waitressing job and a huge black cloud of doom descended upon me. "What am I going to do with my life?“ The frightened voice pressed me again, and again, "What am I going do with my life?" In the back of my mind I could faintly hear my inner voice, asking to create, but the voice of fear was so powerful. I have to do something practical, I decided.

And so I enrolled in a Real Estate course. Every morning I headed to midtown and up to the 45th floor of some faceless building to sit in a blank room under fluorescent lights with thirty other people who were also trying to find their way in the world. The room had a disturbingly tense, competitive vibe; all the students against each other… already. Each day I left the class with my stomach in knots, sometimes on the verge of tears. I projected that room, that vibe, that occupation, onto the rest of my life and the black cloud expanded, denser than ever. I was in despair.

And then, I had a realization that changed my life forever…

(To be continued)