Failing the Passion Test

Sometimes you believe you are about to start something fantastic. But then you have to call it quits because it is Failing the Passion Test. I was presented with this opportunity to get back into something I used to do. Something that I thought would be a lot of fun. It was definitely something I was passionate about in the past. Since it was a great experience I thought that my passion for it would rekindle like it had never ended. But I was wrong. Allow me to start from the beginning.

Resurrecting a Long Dead Side Hustle

Back In what seems like an earlier life I had a side-hustle in the income tax world. I went to the H&R Block School back then and paid the $90 tuition. I passed the class and then took their enormous 8 hour test to be an employee. I worked for them for 4 years and completing each years advanced classes every fall. After those 4 years I left H&R Block and started my Income Tax practice. By word of mouth my practice grew to over 100 good-clients. That lasted a few years and I was as busy as I wanted to be. I was making some very good side money and loving every minute of it. That all came to an end when my engineering job was relocated out of state. I had to sell my tax practice. I was way too busy after the move and never took it up again.

Fast forward through many years to a couple of months ago. I was attending one of the many free events of the summer where there were many vendors present. One was H&R Block giving out bottled water. I struck up a conversation with the young woman there and mentioned to her my distant past work with them. She then offered me their 2014 tax class for free and said they are always looking for tax professionals. She asked for my email address and I then went off to enjoy the rest of the event and the day thinking what a nice place this is to be in. This really just dropped into my lap and maybe this could be a fun little winter gig in the income tax game again.

Classes Begin

Failing the Passion Test- Being aTax professionalI have gone to the class twice a week now for a few weeks. There have been plenty of tax code changes but all in all it was coming back to me. I was easily and accurately completing the test cases and exams. My instructor even told me if I complete the course and exams a job offer is all but certain if I want it. There was even talk about the pay. Wow, a slam dunk, or was it? When talk about compensation came up it was like my eyes just opened because it bothered me. I thought that the pay was less than it was 20 years ago and that was the trigger to finally alert me.

Pay Shouldn’t Be Part of the Passion Driven Equation

My whole new life living with a passion-driven mindset is if I am passionate about something I don’t care what it pays. I then saw that the entire time I have attended class I was doing it but I just didn’t feel the spark that I use to feel. I was just being carried by my enthusiasm. This is something I used to do and was very good at it. I was able to grasp complex tax situations, do the research and perform at a high level. I was really into it. Now I am sitting there doing it very well again but I was just going through the motions.

Our passions aren’t something we find but something we create from all of our experiences. I experienced being a tax professional and was passionate about it but it seems I can’t recreate that old passion. What I think it comes down to is we change over time as we age. I used to love doing a lot of things I don’t anymore so there was no surprise when I realized that trying to rekindle Leisure Freak Tommy’s income tax past was Failing the Passion Test.

Final Comments

This is where my financial independence and passion-driven lifestyle comes into play. I have no interest in just going through the motions anymore so today I resigned from the course. Just because I can do it doesn’t mean I should do it.  I met some very nice people in that class and I wish them well. In my resignation-email I thanked them for the opportunity and the free class but it just wasn’t going to work out. My being open to opportunity allowed me to investigate this and now mark it down as another experience in my “retire early and often” adventure.

Have you ever started to do something you thought you would love to do and then soon after realized it wasn’t for you?

8 thoughts on “Failing the Passion Test

  1. It is also easier to be passionate if the pay is good enough to be a reward too. I enjoy doing landscape design and gardening but doing it for someone else would not be fun for the money I would earn. It is part of working for a goal. My wife worked for a local greenhouse the reward was in working with plants in to cold dead months of winter and then she would take most of her pay in flowers so that we could enjoy them for years to come. If the reward had just been straight wages it would not have been as meaningful to her.

    1. Hi Ralph. Thanks for the comment. Your wife did just as I wish to do in my life now. There has to be more than the money for me to do it. I wonder what I would do if an unattractive passion-wise opportunity came that was obscenely compensated. Would it challenge my passion test and I try to make it more align with what I am passionate about once doing it or fail it up front based on my new passion-driven mindset and just turn it down? I know I can still fall into old career-driven thinking. It is a long lived habit that will take time to break. Being open to opportunities means this may just be put to the test some day.

    1. Hi debt debs, thanks for stopping and commenting. I always thought taxes were interesting. Its a different game now with computers and software than it was in the old pencil and calculator days. I used to have a large number of the forms and their numbers memorized. I was a total Tax Geek. There are still aspects of income taxes that I might really enjoy but getting back into and doing it at the level I had done is just not something burning inside me to do now. Who knows, maybe after a few more years I might give it another look. You should look into it again and test the waters.

  2. I can relate to your story but from a music point of view. I truly love music and I’m a trained musician and singer-songwriter. When I was in high school I for sure thought I was going to become a first chair in a world famous orchestra and I threw myself heart and soul into that intention. I attended college in part on a music bursary and was majoring in music but by then I realized that although I loved music, I no longer felt the flame to be a classical trained artist. Best move I ever made as I don’t think I would have had the other musical experiences I did since then if I had stayed tied to the clarinet chair. Great post Tommy about never going through the motions when you have the options to otherwise!

    1. Hi Kassandra and thanks for the comment. Wow! You are a woman of many talents. I think for me that because I am open to opportunities I sometimes have to go in too far before I figure out its not going to be for me. However the adventure of discovery, even if I don’t end up taking it in, is half the fun. As you say, having options, well that is the biggest blessing of all.

  3. There’s nothing wrong in throwing in the towel on something like that when you realize your heart just isn’t in it anymore. I tried to be a photographer as a side gig and gave it up because I realized it wasn’t my strength, and was best kept as a hobby. We should stick with things that we love to do and are also skilled at if we want to have the most happiness and success.

    1. Hey Untemplater, thanks for the comment. You are right, there is nothing wrong at all with calling it quits when its just not going to be what we hoped it to be. Better late than never and start hating doing it or continue doing something to only complain about it. There is already too much negativity in this world. Don’t need to add any to my life. Once again, thanks for the comment.

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