Passion, what’s yours?

by Colleen | January 8, 2009 7:14 am

“Only pas­sions, great pas­sions, can ele­vate the soul to great things.”
~Denis Diderot

Pas­sion can be defined as a strong feel­ing or emo­tion. Pas­sion makes your heart sing, your spirit soar and your life rich. My friend Debra was recently dis­cussing pas­sion and it made me want to give more thought to the word.

I have quite a few areas I think I’m pas­sion­ate about. My art­work, my daugh­ters of course, but then there is my bak­ing pas­sion. This was evi­dent way back in high school home eco­nom­ics classes in Aus­tralia. That class each week was some­thing I truly looked for­ward to. In my final year we were to dec­o­rate a Christ­mas cake we had baked. I won that year and still have the dec­o­rat­ing book which was given as first prize.

As an adult I have pur­sued my love of bak­ing and owned my own cake shop and small restau­rant.  I’ve taken many dec­o­rat­ing classes and been to culi­nary school.   Fam­ily and friends have always enjoyed my sweet treats and now I am in the process of putting together another bak­ing busi­ness. No mat­ter what else I’ve become involved in, I’ve always had a pas­sion to bake. Like many, I worry about putting enough money away for retire­ment and invest­ing, and so have sought other occu­pa­tions which I hoped might be more lucrative.

While I’ve always enjoyed a mod­icum of suc­cess at most things I’ve turned my hand to, there was quite often some­thing miss­ing. I believe it was pas­sion. Sure, we can all adjust our atti­tude enough to enjoy what we are doing at the time, but truly enjoy­ing what we do and hav­ing a rea­son to bound out of bed each day ready for what­ever that day brings is such a great feeling!

So with a healthy amount of trep­i­da­tion, I will build this cake busi­ness dur­ing 2009. Those other jobs I’ve had in the past 20 or so years since my last cake busi­ness have only pre­pared me to suc­ceed. I’ve worked in state gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, web devel­op­ment and real estate, all of which have given me a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the busi­ness side of mak­ing cakes and mar­ket­ing them.  No longer do I dread head­ing to the office, meet­ing with peo­ple I’d rather not and repeat­ing that pat­tern day in, day out.  No, I’m going to be meet­ing with BRIDES and their moth­ers!  But that my friends is a story for another day…

What­ever your pas­sion, find a way to incor­po­rate it into your life on a daily or weekly basis.  You will feel so much hap­pier.  Enjoy!

Source URL: http://www.cakeartisan.com/2009/01/passion-whats-yours/

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