This has literally been something I have wanted to talk about for a very long time. So I figured, why not make it the first official thing I talk about? First of all, I want to say thank you Lord for allowing me to find my passion, because one thing I have learned is that not everyone is blessed with the opportunity.
But do you have a passion tho?
Secondly....Do you have anything in life that you are absolutely passionate about? I ask this question because the many times I have asked, I have found that people actually don't. It seems to me, that some people were born and were told what they will do in life by their care takers, others are just confused on what they want or how to go about it, and the last bit just don't care to find out. I'm not gon lie, when I was dating around and I used to ask this question and a guy couldn't provide an answer it used to turn me off real quick! Its kind of how I knew deep down the relationship probably wouldn't work...but me being me I tried the relationship anyway but deep down I knew I wanted to date someone who "LOVED" doing something just as much as I do.
Now let me get this straight....In no way am I judging anyone who has no desire to be passionate about something. I am just hear to shed light on the positive things that finding my passion has done for me in life. Now that I am working in the field that I cant go a day without thinking about, I don't work at all. lol. Yea I know that sounds super cliché, but its oh so true. When you wake up doing what you love, and go to sleep thinking about what your going to do the next day, its just ordinary life. Its just you surviving life by just simply doing what makes you happy!
How did I find my passion you ask?
Okay, okay.....let me explain. In no way was this journey to finding my passion easy. It has been an up hill journey since I started caking 8 years ago.
Well more like 17 years ago before I graduated from high school. See back then I found myself sad and confused more often then none because it seemed liked all of my high school friends around me knew exactly what they wanted to do in life! What college they wanted to go to, and what career path they wanted to go on. And boy was the pressure on because my school used to have us go see the guidance counselor and she would ask " okay so what do you want to go to college for?" and my confused self never had an answer. Before I even got to high school I grew up thinking I was going to be a track star! I was good too, I just didn't realize until high school that I really didn't want to run for the rest of my life.
It was until senior year of high school that I finally decided to study to be a Forensic Psychologists. Boy who was I fooling? lol. I took this psychology class and I loved the teacher, and realized that I loved crime, and the way the human mind works. But I didn't realize that I didn't love it enough. I'm not saying that I couldn't do it....its just that I didn't really want to do it. I still watch the ID channel faithfully every single day (I'm watching as I type this lol). But I say that to say even though I love psychology, it just wasn't what I felt I was called to do. One of my favorite quotes that my father imbedded in me was " You gotta want it!" This statement means so much because I truly believe that if you really really really want something, you will bust your ass to get it! no matter what! Well I soon learned after 3 years of college, some F's and thousands of dollars in student loans later, that I really didn't even want to be in school!
Here I am in college and the only things that really made me happy at the time were my friends, the step team I was captain of, and the guy I was dating. That was it. I was wasting so much time and money on school and I really hated it! Sometimes you couldn't even pay me to go to class. So now I have to drop out because the school doesn't want me anymore, and I'm stuck back home with my parents. I had to leave all of my friends in STL to move to SC. I was sad and depressed because here I am feeling like a failure while all of my friends are still in school living their best life.
This depression didn't do anything but intensify, because soon after I moved back home I got pregnant with my amazing daughter Zion, yet I still didn't know what I wanted to do. Now I am a soon to be mom with so many talents and skills, I am creative, I can sew, I can run, I can make almost anything with my hands....but nothing made me happy. I worked so many different jobs, from Lowes, to a front desk attendant at a hotel, security officer, an associate at a top ranking resort company, working for the government, and finally a driver. There were a few I left out in between but you get the point. I have worked almost everywhere, but nowhere made me happy. I hated office drama, I hated being told what to do, I hated someone sittin over my shoulder watching what I was doing. I just literally hated everything. So in the mean time I drank myself away. SMH
For about 10 years of my life I was sad and depressed about feeling like a failure, and I just drank and I drank. Drinking then became my life....why not? I didn't have anything better to do right? Well within this 10 years we had one family thanksgiving and I decided to make a cake....well this cake wound up being a hit! Everyone loved it, and I realized I enjoyed making it. Once I realized this, I started to watch YouTube videos faithfully, then slowly started experimenting. That is when I realized this is it! This is my thing that I cant go a day without thinking about. See I am a person that allows certain things people say, or things I see stick with me. And when I came to this realization about my passion, I couldn't help but think about the scene in Sister Act 2 when Whoopi pulls Lauryn Hill aside and explains to her about this book, and what its like to be passionate about something. Yall don't know how good it felt for me to realize I have "A THING" that I love! Little did I know, that the hardest part was ahead of me...Now came the time to execute!
(Scene from the movie Sister Act 2 No copyright infringement intended. This video is for entertainment purposes only. I do not claim ownership of any of the music or the clips, they belong to their rightful and respective owners. No profit is being made by me.)
And then I just kept on failing....or so I thought!
I don't know if I'm the only person that thought this, but I really thought that as soon as I found "My Thing" that everything would just start getting better. I was so wrong. It took me years after finding what I wanted to do, to realize that execution meant change. I really thought I could keep doing the same things in life, have the same people in my life and somehow become the biggest cake designer of all history. Somehow I thought, that I could still drink and smoke, and get wasted with my friends every weekend, and still show people I was good at what I did.
Things literally just kept getting worse. My boyfriend at the time broke up with me for another woman. I was so destroyed because I felt I had given so much to the guy, not realizing I had given too much to someone that was none deserving. While I was giving so much I was taking from myself, so then alcohol became a coping mechanism. I would drink so much I don't even remember half the relationship smh. None of my jobs I was working at was working for me. Depression is really no joke, so if you happen to know anyone going through it, and you love them...just be there for them!
I found myself saying yes to doing cakes that I had no idea how to design. And then on top of that I would wait till the last minute to do the cake because I was too busy having fun. Then the cakes wouldn't come out right and I would quit. I would then find myself upset and sad when my parents didn't believe in me as well. Here I am living with them, along with my daughter, thinking I know what I want to do in life, begging them to let me quit my job so I can do my cakes and not understanding why they were giving me ultimatums. Or shooting jobs applications at me left and right to fill out because they didn't believe my drive, or that I could even do it. I was so angry with my father I didn't realize that he was just doing what he thought was best. He thought pushing me in other directions would at least get me on my feet and to a point where I could at least take care of my little girl on my own. I was still so angry though. So angry that I just decided to move to another state with some other guy. That didn't last long....and I wound up moving to TX with my cousin. That lasted about 4 months until I finally wound up in GA.
I didn't realize until November 2019 (8 years after finding my passion) that I had to prove it to myself that I "wanted it" first. Although I know this is what I wanted to do, I had to say to myself "Jenne' if you really want this, you need to really focus! You need to really prove to yourself that this is what you really want!" Don't get me wrong, even though I was telling myself this, I was still scared as hell. I still didn't know how I was going to accomplish this goal. Part of me still thought I could work a regular job and still focus....but see God didn't design my mind that way. I am such a one track minded thinker who can sometimes be all over the place. So while I was driving to work one day, God literally changed my thoughts completely. Headed to work on a rainy day my vehicle swerved and I spun in circles from the slow lane to the fast lane and wound up at the median facing the direction of traffic.
This was by far the most life changing incident that has ever happened to me. Not because I was afraid, but because I was still alive! Somehow I made it from one side of the highway to the other side without not one vehicle hitting me. I was able to turn around from the median as soon as traffic broke and drive to work as if nothing happened. I was literally still alive! That was all I could think. After this happened I refused to go to work for like a week...because I couldn't get it out of my head, that I was headed to work to go be a chauffeur for people that couldn't give a crap of what my name is! I couldn't get it out of my head that I almost lost my life driving to work, to go drive for another 12 hours and there is no telling what could have happen then. It was then that I decided no matter what, if I am going to die, I am going to die doing what I love!!
I decided then that I would stop drinking, and I would focus. It was even more of a blessing that just a few months before this incident God also brought this man into my life who actually has always been there. My babe came into my life when I was a kid, we lost touch once our families moved away from each other. His life took him on his own journey and one day he found me on Facebook and here we are! He says he knew from jump he wanted to be with me. I believe because he knew this, he knew he would be willing to sacrifice it all just to make sure our relationship worked. So because he is the type of man that just wants everyone to be happy, he took on the baring of working extreme hours while I focused on my cakes.
The struggle started off rough! I had been living with my nephews mother, and our relationship had gotten so rocky. With me being the stubborn Aires that I am, I refused to see the error in my ways and I allowed that relationship to fail. Which I am completely okay with because I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't. So now I have to find a place to stay, and with my babe being a convicted felon he couldn't put his name on the lease, so I had to figure that part out. Now we have a place with no furniture and barely enough money to feed ourselves. So while I was trying to build my dreams, we as a family would hustle and put the kids in the car and drive for Uber eats, right after my babe had just got done working for the past 12 hours. When I say we hustled, we hustled. Slowly things got better, and I realized....this was it. This was all I had to do was put my best foot forward and work for it!
Today
Here we are today, now in a new and bigger place for our family. We are now able to provide the things we have always wanted for our kids, and we are no longer struggling to make ends meet. This doesn't mean the journey to building my dreams and working towards my passion isn't still an uphill journey. I believe this hill will never stop as long as I keep climbing. Today I now know that its okay to not know what you want in life, what's not okay is settling with not knowing. Today I know that you will never be happy unless you are doing exactly what you feel like doing at that exact moment, so why not do it, and if you can make a profit while doing it. Today I know that it is until you find your purpose, that empty part of you that you feel will NEVER go away.
So I hope.....
I just really hope I was able to reach at least 1 person with this blog. I really pray that if you are someone or know someone that is trying to find their purpose, you will do whatever you have to in order to figure it out, and do NOT stop until you do! I also hope that if you are struggling to find your passion and you just need some encouragement, you will read this blog, or maybe even ask me some questions and maybe I can help in some way. This blog was literally just to provide a bit of hope for someone who may not know what they want. I encourage you to look within yourself and really think long and hard about you, and only you!
A few Tips
- Take Your Journey A Day at A Time
One Thing I learned is that this journey has a time frame of its own. There are things I wanted in the beginning of this journey that I didn't get until years later. There are things I want right now at this moment, but I now know that with time and hard work it will come. Just write it down and manifest it! Stressing over what you don't will only distract you from your goal. Trust the process!
- Build an Amazing Team of Supporters Around You
If there is anything that I know, I am extremely blessed for the parents, and amazing friends I do have. My team not only supports me, but they also are there for me when I am crying because my plan didn't go accordingly. My team has also been with me through my roughest of times. Some of my relationships were definitely tested. But with a lot of change and a lot of communication the ones who are meant to stick around will definitely understand and continue to support you. I feel if you don't have the proper support, you will not succeed.
-Understand That Your Team May Not Always See Your Vision
There has been plenty of times where I have had ideas and thoughts of ways that I would go about building my business and my parents and friends were like "No don't do it!" Its really important you realize that your team wont always agree. It is your job to make the final decision towards your goals and your destiny. It is also important for you to know when you should bring an idea to your team. Sometimes its okay to sit and keep building your idea before you bring it to the ones you love.
-Be Unique in Whatever You do
If there is anything that I have always stuck by, it is be yourself in EVERYTHING that you do. If you know me you know that in everything I do, I always have to do it a little different then the next person. Being unique is apart of what make me who I am, and the same for you. Don't go into whatever your dreams are trying to be like your idol or someone you admire. Its okay to watch someone and learn from them, but take what you learn and apply it to whatever it is that you want. Sometimes I am so unique that I forget that it is also still important to continue to learn from others as well.
-Don't Forget To Hold Yourself Accountable
In order to progress in life you have to be able to learn from every situation you are in. And by learn I don't mean, sit there and continue to blame someone else for why your life isn't going the way you planed. For years I sat and drank and cried about how I grew up or what didn't work for me, or this or that...and those years I just wasted. Now what I can say is it gave me the ability to be able to speak to you all and tell you not to do what I did. Its okay to recognize wrong that has been done to you, but its better when you can learn from it. If something negative happens to you because of someone else, you should sit and say "okay what can I do to not be in this situation again?" If you cant sit and have this conversation with yourself, you will continue to stunt your growth. Be accountable for everything you do, and you will watch things change right before your eyes.
-Understand that the ones that are for you are the only ones you need to care about
Lastly I want to say......you will find the most of your support coming from people you don't even know, or barley ever speak to! I don't know what it is this way...it just is, so deal with it! I can promise you that the majority of the people reading this blog I have never met before, and there will also be plenty of family I grew up with that would never even take the time to read this at all. But that is okay! It is okay to know that you are not for everybody! Because to be honest, is everybody for you? I'm sure you know some people that you support from a distance. So instead of focusing on the ones who don't support you, put all of your energy into the ones who do.
I pray that everyone that has read this to its fullest enjoyed my little story time!
(Yes this is me tonight as I wrote this......There is nothing better then loving who you are in the moment!)
I Love Yall! And Good Night! (Don't forget to Subscribe so you can comment! I Would love to hear from you!)