On Tuesday, I had an Interview for the LF Student partnership program. It started as a usual one with the introduction of both parties and everything was going pretty normal until one question hit.

I was asked, "You say you have interests in DevOps, Blockchain but what is it that you are really passionate about ? ".

My typical answer would have been and had always been

"Computers excite me, they just had a myriad of possibilities built into them and as I had found special comfy of a feeling working with servers and terminals, they had been fun so far and had intrigued me a lot, as such I was inclined towards, production, SRE, DevOps kind of positions where I would experience some bits from development side as well as the fun things I was used to from terminals and scriptings. The feeling that I was working on something in real-time, deploying systems, and was playing a role in maintenance gave up a different kind of satisfaction. Likewise, I had been intrigued by the implication that blockchains brought forth to the table and was willing to explore more."

However, this time around I was awe-struck, I forgot what it was.

I was imagining in my head "What in the world am I passionate about?".

After some weird ahm, umm, and thinking like noises, I guess the interviewer grasped the situation and we proceeded to the next question. Even after the interview was over, I was wondering what the hell happened, How in the world did I forget my passion? What if I am not really passionate about computers after all? Maybe I have some other stuff to do. Something I'd kill for. But nope, Nothing came to my mind. I started feeling a lot exhausted. The sheer pressure was making me kneel. And then I went where people do to find solutions, i.e " The Internet". Normally, I would have preferred reading blogs or documentation, but hey there's no documentation for life and I was too exhausted to even be opening my eyes. I did what any sane[give or take the in] person would do, Opened up good old duckduckgo browser in my phone and typed

!yt What is my passion in the search bar.

Now the web was gonna work its magic by showing me my passion. I laid down to sleep and let the video play with the phone facing downward and only hearing the sound through my earphones. Turns out they don't call the internet "The ocean of knowledge" for nothing. The initial video suggested a strong point of

passion as not concrete but a varying entity often appropriate to think of as something that energizes you and since it's energy, once you do that you use up the energy and naturally you get something else that energizes you.

I was awe-struck by the realization, So much that my fatigue went away. Not just due to the content but the sheer words and emotions expressed by the speaker. I guess you could call that something like being motivated by a motivational video. I woke up from my near-to-sleep condition and quickly grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper to take notes, funny how that works, as I generally feel bored writing. Even when young, I'd rather give exams, preferably oral than have to write those long homework(Which I mostly didn't and got punishment for). Mr.Autoplay had already done their work by then and I was on my second streak. This one didn't seem to particularly disagree with the previous point but brought forth another statement of

"not chasing passion but letting passion chase you"

being passionate about something need not necessarily mean you had to do a related job for a happy career. Just get working and have an unexpected encounter with passion as you have with most things in life. Seemed reasonable to me. At this point, I was having doubts if writing was my passion, by the sight of me taking notes from what seemed like life lessons/ motivational youtube videos. But hey always remember the rule, "Writing ain't for the laziest of the people". Mr.Autoplay on work again, let's get going. This one also had a particularly high impact, but by the time I am writing this(i.e as of Wednesday 5:00) I have already forgotten the core message of this one. The bare minimum I remember is this one was a TEDxsomething, the speaker started with a story of her father receiving a kidnapping call of her, which turned out to be a fake, and after some incidents, she was in her house where she was feeling compassionate towards the fake kidnapper, wondering If the kidnaper thought he didn't have any other options to feed his stomach.

Oh, It was about having options and choices in life, maybe, but not sure.

As this one was nearly over, My mother called me for a cup of tea. I took the cup of tea and sat at the backside of my house and started sipping at it with the view of the fields and houses of my village in front of my sight. With every sip, I thought something about life, maybe "pseudo-intellectual" thoughts but still. One sip led to

"What is life anyway, there's no meaning, we are inherently lost, why do I even play with computers".

and another sip led

"That's nihilism, don't get stuck in that again" and many more kept following.

Some filled with entrepreneurial vibes. Some filled with

" You know what, I am gonna improve from tomorrow, take a rest, just do different kinds of stuff than usual"

That was one intense tea-sipping Journey. I was feeling my long lost imagination returning to me and that as well not with some

"suppressing my pure love for someone and not confession because we can't be together and would be inflicting more sorrow on her after confessing no matter she accepted or declined, wait, who am I even thinking about"

'pseudo-imaginative' level of hopeless romanticism.

Tea sipping had never been too intense, but the effect wore out with that last sip and I was back to the world where I was living.

Maybe I forgot my passion due to being bored at that instant or it was just something to do with that moment and nervousness. Even if the tech was not my passion, did it really matter? It was a viable career option and I was loving my time with it. My passion may have been lying peacefully in a meadow expanding till horizon with a river side by, birds chirping and looking and the clouds with amazement. I could be a bookworm for all I know, or even anything else, But it all seemed trivial, I could always explore these things and currently, tech was something that clicked to me. Something that genuinely excited me for reasons unclear to humanity. So, I decided to stick with tech for who knows how many'th time.

Ohh, looks like I wrote a lot. Maybe writing really is my passion, maybe not as well. I am on the 6th page already, Now have to type this all up again and journal it somewhere digitally, ah man. I think I am going to write these as well in the digital copy, no removal of words, Cause "Why not ?"