Difference Between an Interest, a Hobby, a Passion, an Amateur, and a Professional

I have many, many interests. I am interested in world affairs, which means I try to keep up on who is doing what to who in the world. I am interested in the stock market. I have learned a bit about it, follow the DOW and the Wall Street Journal, and can say I dabble in it, but that is it. I am interested in many subjects and reading and psychology and history and astronomy and, and, and...but that is it, I am interested in it. I learn a little bit about it, maybe keep my interest up and flowing, but that is where it ends.

Then, there are my hobbies -- I used to be a numismatist, a coin collector, and that was fun for awhile trying to hunt down a wheat or indian head penny or a mercury dime.

I still have some stamps I collected as a child, and if I pursued that to be a larger collection, I would have been considered a philatelist.

Through the years, I have learned to paint on wood, paint ceramic pieces, chalk paint, and I continue to paint ceramic pieces and paint furniture on wood with regular paint and chalk paint. Now I have added stain and fused glass to my list of hobbies. To me, these are  passive hobbies. Sometimes I do them, sometimes not. But, I do know that when I do any of these hobbies, I can lose track of time because I am focused on what I am doing. And when the project is complete, I have a great sense of accomplishment. I am proud of my work.

Really, though, I am a collector. Throughout the years, I have collected books until recently, and now I am concentrating on certain authors instead of what catches my eye. (Books are heavy and after hauling them around for half my life, I have finally learned.) When the beanie babies were in, I collected them. I have a collection of purses, and a collection of Dept. 54 Dickens Village. At one point it was light houses, and my penguin collection is to die for.

What's fun about these passive hobbies/collections is I always have something to talk about. When I see someone looking at a light house or a penguin or a book or, or, or...I can strike up a conversation, and before you know it, I have met a new friend or acquaintance. We have a common interest.

And then there are the passions. For me, there is only one passion. Writing. It is all consuming with me -- a scene, a character, a line is running through my mind all the time. I go to bed with a character, and wake up with a new idea, a new scene, a new story to write. It is who I am and who I have always been. When I did not have time to write, I was writing but not pursuing the publishing part of it. It is what I consider my drawer writing. And I have used some of it with today's writing. Now I have the time to pursue my passion -- that all consuming desire to create a story, a character, a scene, a worthwhile line. Sometimes I think my life evolves inside my head.

And because of this, I get out and pursue my hobbies so I can socialize, and talk and eat among fellow hobbyists, and friends, and acquaintances.

One hobby that I believe will turn into a passion soon is genealogy. It will have quite a few of my interests -- research and history, which are tagged with fellow genealogists, and then that will spill over to the passion of writing, to tell the stories of my ancestors. And then I will have a title of a personal historian. But all that is yet to be seen. It is in the formative stage. A side line.

When I was writing my fiction and filing it in my drawers, I would have been considered an amateur. I was not getting paid for anything, sometimes publishing in a literary journal (no compensation there), yet, I continuously learned about this type of writing. I took courses, went to workshops, hobnobbed with other fiction writers.

On the other hand, I was a paid journalist and editor. I had my own resume and cover letter business, and wrote some business pieces for people in the business world, as well as proofed, edited, and typed manuscripts for people who published books. I was a professional. I was getting monetarily rewarded for my efforts.

Then I retired from paid work. And now is my time to take an interest that turned into a hobby that turned into a passion that made me an amateur that takes me to the doorstep of being a published fiction writer, which says I am a professional fiction writer.

By George, who would have thought that that little girl of 8 who said she wanted to be a writer would have had the opportunity to watch a desire grow to the treshold of a new life.

Do you have a hobby? One that can grow into a passion?

Until next time...have a great one...