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I feel a bit privileged as I honed in on mine early on.
gemini://warmedal.se/~bjorn/posts/2022-02-07-ikigai-finding-your-passion.gmi
I apologize in advance for a bunch of solipsism that follows. The subject seems to demand it; feel free to stop reading at any point.
What is my passion? When I was younger and people asked me - in the US it is framed more like 'what do you do for a living', which is much more horrible... I tried saying 'thinking' but that did not work.
In the last century, 'computers', was generally what I used to tell people when they asked. The answer is pretty much meaningless these days. For a while I told people I was an inventor, but that is kind of not quite right as I don't sit there selling patents to the industry (although I tried that for a while). For some time I said I was a researcher, which avoids further questions. I told others I was writing a book...
But it's thinking. I think for a living - whichever meaning of 'living' you chose.
Computing technologies, or information sciences, are a part of it, but not really _it_. I can do what I do without computers, although it's a bit different. In another time I probably would have been a scientist of some sort - or a mathematician as I like abstract ideas. Perhaps a philosopher earlier. Thinking.
Computers are a bit of a cheat. Most interesting problems have complicated solutions, and it is easier to run a simulation than think it through. Or write some code that solves a problem. But the most interesting part of that, to me, is that solving what you think is the problem, reveals the true problem, which is otherwise unthought.
I like thinking. I like taking ideas to absolute extremes and pulling them back, in order to understand them. I like rotating them to look at different aspects, blowing them up and putting them back together. Removing some key part and watching the whole thing disintegrate. Realizing that some other parts are absolutely unnecessary. Reducing the solution to a bare minimum.
Amazingly, most things I've worked on presented incredibly interesting aspects. Some really mundane things. There is always a more clever way to do something, anything - bake bread, lay a floor, clean the toilet. What an oportunity to explore chemistry, physics, materials, art. And sometimes the work is really interesting, even to others.
I've never been bored. There is just so much fantastically interesting stuff to do out there! I can only focus on a tiniest sliver of a dust speck floating in the vast universe with my limited mind. I feel like a beam of a lighthouse, rotating around, constantly lighting amazing things for a fraction of a second, only to move on. There is so little time to focus on any one thing... So much goes by without me even understanding what that bright dot was...
I wake up in the morning and there is all this amazing stuff around me. The people I love, the slowly disintegrating meatsack that needs much daily upkeep, the slow curving up of my mental state to the point of being fully awake, or the weird states of consciousness just before falling asleep. Identifying a specific soundscape in order to boost one ability or another. Delicious food between bursts of mental activity. The dull stupidity overtaking me when I am exhausted. The aches of my worn-out wrist. The dead-end feeling of being unable to find a solution, or the agony of figuring out which direction is fruitless and which will pan out. The total writer's block. Not understanding something, and the anticipation of becoming fluent at it. Or realizing that I will never understand it. I love it all!
My fear is losing it. As I age, I can see where this is headed: if I am lucky (so to speak), I will be a blithering idiot, not sure if I am defecating or not, some day not too far in the future. I am already a fraction of my younger self. Will I be stupid enough that it won't matter that I can't think? Will I be a terrible burden on people I love?
But for now, I am still here, and today I am going to get incredibly high digging into some or other curiosity. Let's see, what will it be today...