The Importance, and Challenges of Passion

Passion is an incredibly important trait to have. When one is passionate about what they do, they do it better, and truly enjoy themselves. This is a thing that many struggle to achieve, primarily because passion doesn’t always pay enough. Artists of all kinds seem to have the most issue with this, as it is difficult to get anywhere near a consistent income. Painters, even when famous, don’t make nearly enough while alive to sustain themselves. It takes an enormous amount of courage to follow your passion in these cases, as failure is more likely than not. One must also have hope, hope that they truly can succeed. Without hope, there would be no point to following your passion. There is an article attached that explains the flaws in working for pure passion, and offers solutions using what they call The Hollywood Principle. The Hollywood Principle as they describe it is “no matter how passionate you are about something, nobody cares about it simply because you do” click here to read further.

With the article in mind, one of the glaring hole in the solutions provided, is art. Art definitely follows The Hollywood Principle, and this idea is more punishing for the artist than others. This is what my biggest challenge is for following my passion. I am a storyteller. For years and years I have been coming up with hundreds of thousands of stories for movies, games, TV shows, books, and nearly every other form of entertainment you could think of. I have every single one of them rattling around in my head somewhere, waiting to be put out somewhere. I think of each of these stories as my children, and I truly want to see them flourish. This is my passion, but storytelling won’t pay the bills. Unless I truly get lucky, and manage to tell my stories on my own, I will never get to a point where I can truly make a living off of what I love. I am afraid of The Hollywood Principle, because I don’t know if I can make people care. I think this is what scares any artist who wants to do what they love, whether it be a musician, a painter, or even a writer. We’re so scared that we are willing to put our passion aside to survive, going into careers where we don’t feel fulfilled. I want to follow my passion, and do what I love, but I don’t know if it’s feasible, and I don’t want to regret following my passion.

-Chris Andrews