Day 17 of the 30 Days of Indie Travel Project* is about Passion.
It’s easy to be passionate about travel, but does that passion permeate the rest of your life? Do you live and work with passion? Why or why not?
The passion I have for travel permeates some, but not all, other parts of my life. But it isn’t my only passion.
Aside from travel, I have one other great passion – sports.
Given that my dad played college football and basketball and I pretty much grew up going to Minnesota Twins baseball games and watching the Minnesota Vikings football team on TV, it should come as no surprise that I am a sports junkie. Not to mention I played softball from the time I was in elementary school through junior high and was on the varsity volleyball team in high school. I love to play sports and I love to watch sports.
I love to spend my Saturday afternoons in the fall with friends watching college football. For a while, I participated in not one, but two, fantasy football leagues. March Madness is probably my favorite time of year – I have run a basketball pool for the last four years (looking for a volunteer to take over this year!) and I typically take off work the first two days of the tournament so I can head to a bar and catch all of the best buzzer-beaters. One of the best dates I ever had was when a guy surprised me with tickets to the Big Ten basketball tournament. In 2003, a friend and I flew on just a couple days’ notice to South Florida to watch the Cubs take on the Marlins in the baseball playoffs.
I still get tears in my eyes when I see replays of Kirby Puckett’s home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series as Jack Buck says “we’ll see you tomorrow night.”
Beyond football, basketball and baseball, I am probably most passionate about tennis – and tennis is where I have been able to combine my passion for sports with my passion for travel. In 2004, I timed a trip to Paris to coincide with the French Open. In 2005, I planned a trip to Australia around going to the Australian Open in Melbourne. For four years in a row, I spent my Labor Day weekends in New York City at the U.S. Open. And, finally, in 2010, I completed my personal “career Grand Slam” when I went to London for Wimbledon.
Unfortunately, what is (was) lacking most in my life as a passion for my work.
I am not someone who has ever felt satisfied by a typical 9-to-5 job where I am just going through the motions. My work has always had a personal feel to it, even when I haven’t necessarily felt passion about what I was doing – I have never been able to leave things at the office. Whether it was a deal gone bad while I was a lawyer or an uncomfortable encounter with an alumnus when I worked in alumni relations and development, it followed me home. I wasted a lot of time stressing and worrying over things that really didn’t matter that much in the long run. Even though the work I was doing was important, it didn’t carry a strong personal meaning for me. It didn’t stir my passion.
That is why my biggest goal for the upcoming year is to find a way to combine my passion for travel with my future work.
*Throughout the month of November, BootsnAll is inviting bloggers from around the world to join them in a daily blogging effort – the 30 Days of Indie Travel Project – designed to reflect on how our travel experiences over the last year – or whenever – have shaped us and our view of the world. Bloggers can follow the prompts as strictly or loosely as they like, interpreting them in various ways and responding via text, photos or video posted on their own blogs.
And this is why we get along well! My other passion is sports as well. That is why I started my College Football Travel Tour. It’s a way of combining sports and travel together. From the early trips I have taken, I have to say it is a lot of work but also some of the most fun I have had traveling.
When you do something you are passionate about, it doesn’t feel like job even though it is hard work. I am thankful that I came up with this idea as a side project/niche to my regular stuff with budget travel.
With that said, please don’t bring up the 1991 World Series again. I have been a Braves fan ever since I was a little kid. One of the best World Series ever but that was one that got away!