“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” -Oprah Winfrey
What are you passionate about? What drives you? What makes your eyes light up and cheer out loud?
For me it’s travel. Going to a new place, observing the culture, tasting the food, smiling at the new people, and watching family and friends interact. I think it is so amazing and beautiful to watch how other people live. Traveling means I actually get to live it, breathe it, taste it, and feel it first hand? Well, that just makes me do a happy dance.
For a long time I thought my days living abroad were over. I mean, where is the opportunity after studying abroad in college and then again for graduate school? You’re supposed to settle down, get married, have babies, and/or do the big corporate job by (insert insanely young age here). Right? Well, that’s at least what I thought. I have no idea where that seed came from, but it was a full fledged oak tree by the time I was 26.
At 27, and a breakup of a six year relationship, I had to reconstruct what I thought I wanted. In this reconstruction phase, someone close to me asked, “Yes, but what do YOU want?” I had never really, truly asked myself that. When I started to get happy in my own skin, decide what made me happy and not care what anyone else thought, I found myself living abroad in another country by age 28.
The Light Bulb Moment I Realized I was Living My Passion
I was in Amsterdam for a day trip with my boyfriend and his two friends, a month or so into my leap of faith abroad to live in Europe with my German boyfriend. After a long day of walking around, site seeing and exploring the city we stumbled upon a small pizzeria along a canal.
