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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Not that there’s any good reason to market yourself to me since I have no jobs or investments to dole out, but... What I actually like to know about a new acquaintance is what they’re patient about. Steady, quiet, indefatigability. A thing you’d plug away at for 20 years.
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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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