Passion....

There's an old Einstein quote I keep hearing repeat in my head these days....

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish based on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

I am here, battling with this tree....
The branches, poking me from every which-way and the texture of the bark, drying my once fluid and flexible fins to something like a dead leaf. Occasionally I feel one of my delicate, iridescent scales ripped loose from my body, though I somehow continue to move. Oh, but it's no use! I do not have fingers for gripping or arms for pulling me upward. I do not have legs or feet to push me to the next branch that is far beyond my reach. It is now that I realize that I cannot breathe out of water. I gasp in panic, but my lungs remain empty.
....when I belong in the water.
I feel the comfort of pressure, pushing at me, gently, on all sides. I look around me and my eyes are pleasantly bombarded with color. Coral in deep fuchsia anemone that seems to glow in an interesting cerulean, and fish! Fish all around me; some, colors I cannot name as I have never seen them before. I see a school of tiny, silver fish up ahead. A ray of sunlight pierces the water and reflects off of their bodies. They float past me and eye me with their giant orbs and then go on with their business of feeding, searching for mates, protecting their offspring, and, of course, avoiding predators. I am neutrally buoyant, and I twist and contort my body in ways that I never could out of water. I bob in and out of seaweed plants and dart through small, underwater caverns as quickly as I can, for fear of meeting a hungry squid, who lures his prey into eternal blackness with his slimy tentacles. I marvel at the way, when I exhale, bubbles ascend, ever-so-gradually to the surface. I meet a cross-current and I dance, with the other fish around me, back and forth to the rhythm of the ocean as it pushes and pulls us along in an easy, natural way.

Let me be frank for a moment. They tell me, "Alaina! Whatever you do, have an undying passion for your goals, and that will carry you through!" My current major does not toke the flames of passion within me. I feel dead inside. My heart is a charcoal sketch or a a black-and-white movie. I feel genuinely sad and empty. I feel dull and colorless.
.....But when I am writing! When my fingers are "click-click-clicking" swiftly across the keyboard, or my right hand is swirling a pen up and down on a once-blank sheet, and my brain is connecting words to formulate a story! THAT is when I feel alive. There are fireworks going off in my brain. Paint is being thrown on that stark, barren canvas. Words are flowing, effortlessly.
I know journalism is the kind of field where it's incredibly difficult to find a job, and that once you do, it probably doesn't pay very well. I know that it may take me some time to pay off my student debt. I know that it may seem, to some, like I just want to take the easy way out.
This is not the easy way out. I am going to create a world of problems for future, graduated me to solve out there in the real world.
But I am not afraid.
If the issue is finding my passion, I do not need to look very far. I have enough passion and determination to fuel a continent in the area of writing. 
And I have every confidence that my success in writing will vastly overpower the success I could find in any other field. Why?
Passion. Determination. And confidence.
This is what I was designed to do. Now I just have to go out and get it.