Passion or Nah?

This weekend was SUPER DUPER action packed!  Like no exaggeration.  Saturday morning was a great one…was finally able to take my first culinary course.  EXCITING! And trust me it was super informative.  It’s refreshing to be amongst other culinary professionals and be able to pick their creative brains.  After leaving the city, I headed back in to the home state to embark on an evening of girl talk and fine dining at Ruth’s Chris.  Fancy, no?!  It was my first time there, but I’ll get into my thoughts about that in my restaurant review post (yes I will dedicate a whole post primarily to my experience).  And then came Sunday.  I had to work from home AND was commissioned to cook at a family function.  So as you can see I was a busy little something.

This leads me into the real reason for this post all together.  When I first graduated from college, I jumped right into the Finance world with my head down ready to climb the corporate ladder.  Five years in, I realized, I had missed such an important theme.  Happiness.  I worked long hours, I was stressed, I was downright miserable and my attitudes began to affect my personal relationships.  The money was good, but not worth the life sacrifice I had to make.  I ALWAYS knew I loved to cook, but leave my lucrative corporate job…to what become a line cook?! You can clearly already see what I picked.

To me there is a perfect balance in pursuing one’s passion.  At no point (and now we are about to get into some very STRONG opinions) do I think it is prudent to quit one’s job to just pursue a passion.  I instead think that you need to make both work to your advantage.  I’ll use my situation as an example.  Yes I work full time, and yes I’d love to cook for a living period, but I need to FUND this dream.  I need to have seed money, I did to have a steady stream of clients, I need to be smart and organized.  And before you say it, no everything cannot be planned, but if I truly am passionate about what being a business owner, I need to give my passion a FAIR CHANCE!   And that fair chance doesn’t include leaving finance prematurely before I have done everything possible to set up my PASSION for success.

And maybe I have gotten it all wrong, and you should do what you love initially all other things held equal.  But you tell me what you think…Does passion trump all …or is there a science to this thing here.

So sound off folks….PASSION OR NAH?