the hustle of finding a passion

Becoming good in climbing had felt so natural. Whenever I was on the climbing wall, it felt exactly right.

When I finished my comp climbing career I had been three years into med school. Ready to find my new passion, to give it my everything, to become extremely good at something else but climbing, to become respected, successful, accepted, loved AND to give something back, to do something super meaningful. My search of my second hidden talent had begun. I tried out many different things in med school - from pediatrics in Paris to neuroscience research at Harvard. Wherever I went, I couldn´t help comparing how I felt, to how I felt when I was climbing. I saw the glow in the eyes of fellow med students and felt bad for not feeling it. For not being born with the aura, the strive, the will of a doctor to help patients, to heal, to be part of the hospital system, to be proud to be a part of it, to return something for having had the privilege to study medicine.

Becoming good in climbing had been so easy. Or at least I never had much doubt about the fact that I was climbing most of the time. Certainly a lot of training was involved and a lot of time invested, but it never felt like I´d be sacrificing anything. It just felt so natural, so intuitive, so perfect. Over the last years I was painstakingly searching for this feeling inside the medical world. This summer I started my first real job, this fall I quit my first real job. Lots of chocolate, wine, tears and friend support involved (thanks a lot!). In the meanwhile I´ve somehow, somewhere lost my inner urge to find a passion that would replace climbing. It might seem so normal and obvious to anyone else, to just take it slow and see, but it took me a while to truly understand that. Some weeks ago I started a job in the public health sector and an online master in PH. I´m feeling a little proud and bold to have stepped away from a traditional doctor´s career (at least for now), the obvious path that wouldn´t have left many questions open. I still don´t know where to find a new, meaningful passion that could be my job, nor if it´s actually necessary to search or find that. And for the first time I´m even enjoying the uncertainty.