Ever since I was little – but especially since my later teenage years – I’ve been told to follow my passion. That my passion would lead me to happiness, joy, and fulfillment in life. Well, I followed my passion and it led me to this filthy puddle behind a dumpster in a dark alley.
It turns out that my undying passion for the study of reanimated medieval corpses in the culturally Swedish Åland Island region of Finland is not beneficial to anyone anywhere. If only I had seen it coming. If only I had been warned. My passion was supposed to set me on a path towards lifelong success, but instead it set me on a path towards total decrepitude.
Passion is one of those words with many meanings. Usually when people follow their passion to the shadowy dumpster netherworld, it is because they are following the passion of their loins, not the passion of their dreams. But among dumpster dwellers, I have learned that I am special and unique (and I’ve always been special and unique, or so I’ve been told). I followed the passion not of my loins but of my dreams.
There are many facets to the study of Åland Island draugar that are worthy of passion. Draugar (plural) are the undead troublemakers of the Norse sagas, of course, whereas draugr is the singular form of the word. Is not even that little linguistic tidbit worthy of the slightest degree of passion? And what about the Åland Islands’ own unique position in history and geography? The draugar of this autonomous Finnish archipelago have long been neglected and rightfully deserve the passion necessary to not only unearth new information about them, but to also literally unearth them themselves.
There is nothing wrong with my passion, but I made a major miscalculation when I believed it would lead me towards the light. I was misled myself. My passion did not open any doors at all for me; even those in the public sector remained firmly shut. And the two-faced traitors of the higher education system did not appreciate my passion, either.
Why couldn’t my passion have been to exploit child labor in Asia? Or to casually piddle with other peoples’ entire investments on my computer? Or to get off on suing regular everyday folks for insubstantial reasons?
These are the questions I ask myself from my damp pit as I watch the Paul Revere impersonator tell the latest batch of tourists about the arrival of the British. Is doing this his passion? Pretending to be a colonial revolutionary? I hope so, and more power to him if so, I say! He figured it out whereas I lie here watching him from my puddle of filth, gradually growing green with envy and a certain kind of creeping death.
Because you do not pick your passion; your passion picks you. And I am cursed by my passion for ancient Baltic zombies. It is not my fault that I am now slowly becoming one.
