By Munraj Singh Chawla

What The Hell is My Passion?

So, here it is. My first SCAB. I don’t know if I’m meant to tell you about myself or make future readers gauge an understanding of me from subtle hints in my writing. But, the least I can do is introduce myself. My name is Munraj. It’s a lot easier for me to write my name than say it; my family and friends all pronounce my name differently and put the stress and emphasis in different places so whenever I have to introduce myself in new places I never know how to say it. Is it Munraj, or Munraj? Or Munraj? Or… you get the point.

Anyway, to the reason I’m writing this. All the new ‘Future Stars of Advertising’ in this September’s cohort of SCA received an emailing outlining what to do before we started. I know entering the scholarship projects was technically the first task mentioned but I had already been working on that.

I was personally struggling with the passion project. Starting a video with “Hi, my name is Munraj and This is Me” is all well and good but what do I show after that? What am I actually passionate about? I read and reread the .pdf and, after reading it for the 100 th time, trying to work out what I did in my life that could constitute as a passion, I was worried that whatever I picked wasn’t going to be creative.

Which made me worried I wasn’t creative.

I thought about hobbies that I have – I enjoy bouldering, football, cycling… but none of those are conventionally creative hobbies. I got so hung up on the word passion, thinking it’s a thing that I have to want to move mountains for, couldn’t live or breathe without, had to talk to everyone I know all-day-every-day about, that I struggled to come up with anything that fit this illogical criteria I’d constructed in my head.

Sometimes you need people who know you well to remind you of things you do that are habitual or so naturally part of who you are that you don’t see them as passions, just things that you naturally

1. I struggle with asking for help sometimes, so talking to people about this was unnerving at first. I did get some suggestions, rather than insights and subsequently I learnt a lot about what other

people’s passions are, but eventually I got some understanding of myself too. I realised not having a

conventionally creative hobby doesn’t make me any less creative. And, I learned I do have creative hobbies that I don’t actually realise I do, just things I enjoy and do natur-. Oh. Look at that, I figured out what to do for my passion project.

When it comes to starting that video with “Hi, I’m Munraj and This Is Me,” I may not have a clue how to say my name and I will definitely rerecord that section hundreds of times, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what I’m passionate about.