Following My Passion

I have feeling kind of in a rut lately. Life has caught up with me and I feel I have been constantly stuck doing things to get by instead of things that help satisfy my passions in life. It has caused me to think about passion and how important making time to fulfill our passions can be. With me I have found myself over the last year falling into the role of doing things always to get by and claiming I am to tired to work at my passion after I get done with my day. It has created a state in which I am not giving to a very important part of my being.

I think a common mistake about pursuing your passions is that it is going to come naturally to you and it will be easy because you want to be doing it. This is not true; for most of us if we have something we love to do we have to work hard at it. It can be hard to do it after a long shift at work and we can easily find excuses to not do it. I have been responsible for falling into this category lately and I find it is taking a toll on my soul because I am not fulfilling a very important part of it. My passion lies in women’s issues and in finding ways to help other women learn about the role feminism plays in their lives.

During my university career I was able to center my education on my passion and as a result found it pretty easy to incorporate women’s issues and feminism into my daily life. When I was in class I was learning, when I was outside of class I was having enlightening discussions with friends or writing and independently learning about women’s issues. I lived and breathed feminist theory; it was easy then to know that I was doing what I was meant to be doing in life. When I left university I lost a lot of that community connection that kept me in touch with my passion and as a result began to fall into a rut.

In my rut I found myself going to work and coming home to watch television. At my job I find many interesting things to learn but because of my line of work it didn’t keep me in touch with my passion which is women’s issues. I have learned tons of amazing things about natural health and as a result have begun to live a healthier life then before but there was still a part of me that was not getting addressed, one of the most important parts I would say. It was after a few months of being in this rut that I came up with this blog.

When I started the blog I knew it would be a great way for me to keep in touch with my feminism and have a medium in which to express all my thoughts on the issues. It has done that for me and, though I have been a little lax this summer, I try to keep up every week so that my passion can get addressed and I have an outlet. However, even with the blog I have recently found it is not enough. I want to find a way to use my degree and my knowledge and I want to create a community of women in which to share it with. I have started that community already with a great group of women who are as excited about women’s issues as I am but it is time to move that group to a more public space and group of women.

This Friday night September 30^th myself, along with my current group of women, are going to be officially starting a women’s group open to the community at large. It is time that I created a space in which myself and other women feel comfortable coming and discussing issues that relate to our lives and experiences. It is time that women in the Oshawa area had a space where they have a voice. Also, I think the passion that has been niggling the back of my mind will be ceased with this group because I will have a way to be a part of a strong female community again.

Feminism is my passion and that part of my being that keeps me driven. By not acknowledging it I have been doing myself a disservice and I think that this is the same with all people. We need to be able to find our passion and work out an outlet for it.

 

So if you are in the Oshawa area on Friday night please feel free to stop by the Garden Grove, 11 Taunton rd. (simcoe and taunton) at 8pm and we have some open honest discussion about women’s lives and experiences.