Lighting your Soul Ablaze

During lunch the other day, a coworker of mine was talking about having to find something that "sets his soul on fire". That got me to really thinking about what I'm passionate about, and how I'm living my life.

These are deep thoughts, and things I don't typically like to be forced into thinking about. In fact, when I usually bring myself to think about these things I tend to become rather melancholy, to the point of near depression. Am I doing what really sets my soul ablaze? Is what I'm doing in my personal, spiritual, and professional life in line with what God wants for me? Where will I be in 5, 10, 20 years? Is it what I'm doing now? What I can say is that this time I seem to have a much more grounded response to these questions that typically.. maybe I'm growing up. I sure hope not!

Where this interpersonal exploration took me was to a place where I seldom really go - self acceptance. I typically spend my time looking at my life and wondering what I'm doing wrong, not what I've done right. I'm passionate about what I'm doing, and typically "flame out" easily on things because of disillusionment or lack of long-term interest. What I can tell you is that if I'm passionate about it, it consumes me. It doesn't matter if it's work, or church, or home.. if it's what's lighting my soul ablaze I will be into it 100%.

What I've come to realize is that I am doing what I love to do, which is dream a better dream. The work I do is all about how to make the network better and improve the company, and I'm pretty dang good at it. While I get upset about where we might be in 5-10 years, I get the chance to dream and research where we should be, and try to help steer our direction. That's really an incredible opportunity. I've had the chance to help build 2 different internet-based services from small online presences. When I first started working here our aggregate bandwidth for all of our customers was under 10meg. We are almost to the 2-gig mark now. Customers are thought of in tens of thousands, not just tens like when I started. It's comforting to see what we've accomplished as a company.

And maybe that's what really sets my soul ablaze. The opportunity to dream.