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This was a topic we were given to write on for my creative writing class. I'm not entirely satisfied with the flow of it, but overall I'm pleased with it.

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I used to believe I was passionate about a lot of things. Politics, religion, researching (whatever topic you can think of), writing, art, and especially Japanese-anything captured all of my attention. There was nothing I wasn't at least a little bit interested in learning tons and tons about. But these days I have a bit more trouble defining what I'm passionate about.

The easiest answer is drawing. I was always the best artist in class, the first to realize that people had five fingers. I can spend hours working on some image or other, sometimes even whole weekends. I sit hunched over a sketchbook or my computer tablet, moving stylus or pencil until the picture I see in front of me looks somewhat similar to the picture in my head. If I work long enough and hard enough, I can sometimes make the two a perfect match, although I don't always know what the idea in my head is before my hand finishes the necessary movements. And when I'm satisfied, I display it for the world to see.

But that's a very simple answer. I don't know that I can define art as my passion. I love to do it, that's true enough. I don't know that I would feel the same about my life without it. But my skills are limited, and it's difficult to find the right way to express the abstracts and absurdities that float through my mind. Sometimes, I have to turn to words.

Not to say that I don't enjoy those words. Making up stories is the only other thing that has consumed me as much as drawing has. Since I learned to speak, I've told tales of dogs riding the merry-go-rounds that were pictured in the flaps of folders at great grandma's house. I've reinvented Santa's battle against the evil tuba-playing bear that ruled over the poor wooden animals trapped inside the toy train that decorated the coffee table of my living room every Christmas. The little orphan Lego boy rode on clay hover-boards, ignoring his hook handed uncle's calls to come home to the Lego brick house standing tall on my desk. When I became enamored with some cartoon or other, I wrote stories about my favorite characters and published them on a website dedicated to fan fiction. I even got a little recognition there. With every (awful) story I wrote about adventurous children that I wished I could meet, I learned a little more about how to put the words together. I'm still learning.

I guess that gives me two passions. Sometimes one trumps the other. I have phases where I do nothing but write, and then not long after the only thing my hands can release are images fantastic or inane. Lately though, they seem to work together. Like the old Power Rangers that I watched when I was a kid. My Passion-Zords have combined to form a Mega Passion-Zord of sorts: web comics. Zord.

My ability for comics is not nearly as developed as the other two pastimes, but I love reading web comics, almost to the point of obsession. I check the websites daily, hoping for some new tidbit in the latest plot arc in the land of Inverloch, or the most recent indie joke made by the cynical twenty-somethings in the Coffee Shop of Doom. I can pinpoint the exact moment that I realized I could combine the two things I enjoyed. Sitting in front of my computer, reading a comic about an Apple computer nerd. It made me laugh, and the artwork was dead on. I wanted to do something like that. I wanted to tell a story again, but not just with words and not just with a picture. I wanted both. I want both.

I don't know how far my new passion will take me. Sometimes I get frustrated with the whole shebang and want to go back to one or the other. But no one ever got anywhere by ignoring the things they enjoy, even if those things sometimes don't enjoy you. So I keep on truckin'. Maybe someday my passion will be more than just mine. But that would be a dream.

That's really great!

I love writing when given a great topic, good job! I think it flows well 3nodding

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