No, I’m not talking about Passion of the Christ, nor the kind of passion that attracts those Google referrers making hardcore porn one of my most popular referring search terms. I’m talking about passion for what you do. On Saturday I had a wonderful session with Jason Hobbs, brainstorming a new project we’re working on together. We worked together at Krypto Plus from 1997/98, where I coded Sun-foods, to my knowledge the first online grocery store in the country, and where we developed various Internet courses, taught Perl, tried to sell Linux PC’s, and tried other generally ahead of their time ideas (thanks to Pieter Claasen for the start in Open Source!) Working on Saturday reminded me of the excitement of those heady pre-boom days, and the magic ingredient for making a success of anything – passion.
I’m lucky enough at the moment to have the opportunity to pursue some of my passions, free from having to focus solely on earning an income (thanks to Paul, a property visionary who dragged me kicking and screaming into buying some houses a few years ago). It’s not as easy as it sounds. I have to remind myself what those passions are (amazing what you forget you love doing when you get out of practice), and then narrow the list down before I book myself up for 15 lifetimes.
So far some of the candidates include: working on an Open Source version of the Talent Exchange (there’s been tremendous international interest in the project), an organic food store, the literary project from Saturday, getting my tai chi to a good enough level to start teaching, helping to roll out Wikipedia in all the local languages, helping to restore a forest, clearing the invasive aliens off the neighbouring Solole reserve, and, like the old Lunch Bar ad, mooch mooch moore.
It’s going to be a fun year!