I've confused passion with excitement. An issue people rarely talk about these days is what true passion actually feels like. Instead we assume that passion feels like excitement — that passion is inherently exciting — but that assumption is usually wrong. You see, it's easy to get briefly excited about something — an idea, a project, a potential promotion—and think that means we're passionate about it too. But this sensation of excitement is different from the type of deep passion that drives and fulfils people long term. Excitement comes and goes; it wanes when times get hard, when the work gets tough, when creative flow turns into drudgery. True passion, however, arises after you've put in the long hours necessary to become a skilled craftsman, a skillset you can then leverage to have an impact, to gain autonomy and respect, to shape and control your destiny.