Conversation

Do not use a sentence beginning “I am passionate about...” to describe yourself. I for one mentally substitute “insecure about” and I strongly suspect I’m not the only one
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“Passionate” to me is now unbreakably associated with frantic signaling and unsustainable levels of over-motivated underachievement, scenesterism, grifts, hustles... Spikes of explosive theatrical activity that peter out and turn into depressed abandonment and derelict projects.
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It’s next door to popular terms next door to “passionate” like “gritty” and “relentless” but I look for a gentler trait. A whole ‘Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption’ energy. When I spot that, I feel comfortable building off it.
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Grit is chewing glass while being punched in the face. Desensitizes you. Relentless is Terminator. Robotic Ives you. Patience is digging a tunnel for 20 years with a geologist’s hammer. A persistence so gentile it’s like erosion by water.
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I think this reading is likely to filter out as many of the best people as the worst. In its best use, these are not mutually exclusive, and the passion sustains the patience where mere external incentives would not.
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