H is totally cognisant of her passions, she is the one who calls them her passions. They are: Shakespeare, Photography, playing the cello, reading, lego and writing (not on paper but in her head) and making things… “There are quite a few things Mum” “They are what I like doing, and what I like”.

How they manifest themselves is by getting books out about those topics, learning speechs off by heart, making Lego islands/boats with a young friend. It’s constant. These passions take all her time (not so much the cello), she is endlessly doing something and reading fills in all the space around her other kinds of busyness.

The other night H was so upset about the unfinished projects, the Shakespeare themed marble run, the farm that never fulfilled it’s supposed destiny… There is just not enough time. She was disappointed in herself but yet can’t help embracing the new idea, challenging her understanding. I have a lot of supposed “free” time in that I don’t have a 40 hour a week job, I am just hanging out out home when I am not engaged in some community thingy. But I am the same, there isn’t enough time to do all the things I want, or feel an obligation to do. We are both not filling in time we are actively following whatever pulls us at that time and we both put something down when it is no longer a challenge.

I do not know how people who have a fill time job/ school deal with this after filling their heads with other stuff or having to deliver a product. Do you just drop a passion? not dive as deeply into it? Wait until you retire? Ever now and then I toy with the idea of making one of my passions financially rewarding but some part of doing this removes the thing that motivates me/the joy of it. Is this the same for kids? I get books out for H on her passions, remind her to practice the cello, take her places but I don’t want to do the thing that monetising would do to my “hobbies” (that word is so belittling for what is actually a passion)…