How Passion Found Me (Spoiler Alert: I Wasn't Looking)

Have you ever fallen in love with something before you realized what was happening? Like when you’re at a party, eyes locked with someone across the room, and five minutes in, you’re quoting each other’s favorite song lyrics? That’s how I fell for writing—it snuck up on me like an unexpected plot twist in a rom-com, the kind where suddenly you're rooting for the lead couple to just get together already.

But my journey to passion wasn’t so much a “love at first sight” moment as it was a slow-burn romance, quietly unfolding between the pages of borrowed library books, notebooks with doodled margins, and a typewriter I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to touch at six years old.

Here’s the funny thing, though: I didn’t even think writing was my “thing” for most of my life—just an amusing sidekick, not the star of the show. So, how did I realize my passion was right under my nose all along, and what keeps me coming back to it? Let me take you into the folds of my story.

Chapter One: A Passion Born on Cobblestones

Growing up in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal felt like living in an indie film—full of lightly drizzling mornings, wrought iron staircases, and neighbors that somehow knew everything about your family history. Back then, storytelling was just... what you did. My father, a journalist, would spin out articles at his desk while drinking coffee so strong it practically reached out and slapped you awake. Meanwhile, my mother, a French professor, carried boundless enthusiasm for classic literature.

Picture it: dinner-table debates about Rabelais and Atwood, and my eight-year-old self being wildly unimpressed. And yet, I had a secret. After our talks, I’d take to scribbling down my own stories in a battered journal I found in the back of a closet. At the time, they were mostly about dragons named Jacques and princesses who told their suitors off. Trust me, my French vocabulary wasn’t extensive enough for subtlety.

Montreal was the perfect muse—quirky and full of contradictions. Walking through its streets was essentially a crash course in cultural nuance: the old-world charm of Old Montreal neighbored graffiti-covered alleys that pulsed with new ideas. I didn’t know it at the time, but the city was imprinting itself on my imagination. It planted the seeds of my obsession with how language could tell stories that felt both local and global.

Chapter Two: Paris Flirted First, Writing Wrote Back

Fast forward to my twenties: I boarded a plane with an overstuffed suitcase, bound for a semester abroad in Paris. My time there cemented one thing for me—words were everywhere, and they mattered. Parisians never just "talked." They debated, dissected, and turned everything into performance art. Suddenly, casual chats at cafés felt like auditions for Émile Zola’s next short story collection.

If Montreal taught me how language could bridge cultures, Paris showed me its power to seduce. In smoky bookshops and along the Seine, I realized many of the words people said said way less than the silences they left hanging. When language danced an intricate tango, I was hooked. I poured hours into writing letters I’d never send, journals I’d never reread, and short stories I swore I’d show someone “one day.”

Spoiler: That “one day” came years later, and yes, I cringe at some of those stories now. But writing taught me what love does when it’s messy—it stays patient, waiting for you to figure out how to show up for it.

Chapter Three: Love, Actually (Was a Notebook All Along)

It wasn’t until I started working as a translator in a publishing house that I understood just how much writing loved me back. Day after day, I bridged French and English texts, learning to see how minor shifts—the implied flirtation of “tu” over “vous,” for instance—could deepen or crumble the meaning of a story.

One day, my boss handed me a Québécois manuscript and asked if I’d like to adapt it instead of translating it. It was terrifying. I can’t cook without a recipe—how was I meant to rewrite someone else’s book? But she insisted, and as I reworked those pages, something clicked. Writing wasn’t just about channeling inspiration or stringing clever sentences together. It was about shaping someone’s connection to the world—a love letter to the reader, wrapped in syntax and metaphor.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stop. I started drafting short stories about Montreal’s changing identity, scribbling half-finished poems on Post-it notes, and, at last, publishing novels. Writing went from a timid crush to a steady—it challenged me to dig deeper without judgment. It became my longest relationship, outlasting bad breakups and late-night existential crises (also known as "writer’s block Mondays").

Lessons Learned: What Writing Taught Me About Real Love

If my love affair with writing has taught me anything, it’s that passion in any form—be it romantic, creative, or personal growth—isn’t about fireworks. It’s about consistency, nourishment, and staying curious.

Here are a few reminders for anyone who hasn’t quite found their "thing" yet:

  1. Passion Finds You When You’re Not Looking

  2. You don’t have to hunt your passion down with a butterfly net. It’s likely waiting for you in plain sight—maybe in the hobbies you’ve abandoned or the daydreams you keep coming back to.

  3. It’s Never Too Late to Rekindle It

  4. Sometimes the things we brush off as “just fun” are what we should be leaning into. Remember, true love doesn’t care about timing.

  5. Impostor Syndrome Doesn’t Define You

  6. For years, I thought I couldn’t be a “real writer” because I didn’t fit some perfectly polished image of what that meant. Guess what? Real writers, athletes, or artists—all of them doubt themselves. You’re allowed to be messy while you're figuring it out.

  7. Passion Raisons Your Self
    (Yep, we're going bilingual for this one.) When I say "raisons," I mean both the French word for “reasons” and literal raisins—passion shrinks and concentrates into something denser and richer over time. Passions age with you, and in the process, they become staple ingredients for your identity.

Happily Ever After Is a Journey, Not a Destination

So here’s where I leave you (well, for now): Whether or not you’ve discovered your passion, know this—it might not arrive in one perfectly wrapped package with a neat bow on top. It might look like a messy pile of “maybes” and “what ifs,” and that’s okay. Passions, like relationships, take time.

For me, writing has been a steady companion—a French-Canadian muse with plenty of quirks, a stubborn temperament, but also endless warmth. Falling in love with it didn’t just give me a career. It taught me that the best passions aren’t just about what sets your soul on fire—they’re about finding something that grows with you, even when it means rewriting your story halfway through.

So try things. Borrow someone’s pen when yours runs out of ink. Trust yourself. And, if life’s quiet for now, go take a walk. You never know what cobblestone path might lead you somewhere new.