Episode 1. Passion: The Fuel

I get a bit bored of LinkedIn. There’s something missing. 

My feed is a smorgasbord of achievements, milestones, business snapshots and a wee bit of ra-ra cheerleading. All good stuff in a business sense. 

I get genuinely delighted when I see friends and ex-colleagues having real success. I’ve never been one to get jealous of others doing well. To me, happiness comes in many forms, and seeing people I respect be successful is one of them. 

The thing that I feel is really missing from LinkedIn, is what sits behind that success. What sits behind the individual. What’s the passion in their life, that really drives them and brings them a huge amount of joy. The thing that exists completely outside of the job title, away from LinkedIn and their day-to-day role. 

The thing that, if you took it away, would make someone a slightly lesser version of themselves. 

Before you say it, I know it’s ironic posting this on LinkedIn, the very thing I get bored of, but the passion that drives the individual brings soul and depth to a person. In my experience, that passion is what makes the individual brilliant at the others things they do. The work stuff. It’s the foundation for what we see on our LinkedIn feed. 

I have a passion for writing. Many friends and colleagues know this about me. I like words. And I really like the challenge of putting them in the right order on a page. 

In my spare time, I immerse myself in writing rhyming children’s picture books. I’ve been doing it for years. Is it a side hustle? Hopefully. Have I been published yet? Nope. Do I think they’re good enough to be published? Yep. Would I do it if I knew they’d never be published? Absolutely. 

I genuinely love the process of making something from nothing. Of starting with a blank page and a rough idea for a story, and ending up with a world that didn't exist before. Most of all, for me, writing is the perfect panacea to the intensity and demands of work. It brings calm to my brain and the creativity of it makes me immensely happy and grounded. 

I've recently finished my fourth book, “When Moon Hid In Tumbledown Wood”. Fourth time’s a charm and all that. What started as a short story, was re-written multiple times over 12 months, and is better for it. The process of creating, editing, re-creating, re-editing and then refining into a more complete manuscript is a discipline I’ve learned to embrace over many years of writing. There’s a determination to it that feeds into everything else I do. 

And I suspect most people have a version of this. Something that has nothing to do with their job title and everything to do with who they actually are. It might be writing. It might be amateur dramatics, Lego collecting, running ultra marathons at weekends, or even turning old telephone boxes into mini discos. 

LinkedIn has somehow decided that stuff isn't relevant. I think it might be the most relevant stuff of all. 

I’d genuinely love to know what drives other people. The thing you do that has nothing to do with what's on your profile and everything to do with who you are and what underpins all that you’ve achieved in life. 

And if your answer is “my job is my passion”, then I salute you. But I think you might need to get a hobby. 😊