A friend of mine whom I saw this past September at a "mastermind" type group meeting made an insightful observation about me.

He said, "Scott, I don't feel like you're passionate about anything you're working on."

I protested, "But I'm passionate about my business..." He cut me off.

"No, those are things that are important to you, but I mean what are you really passionate about?"

He got me to thinking and you know what? He was right. I wanted to say that I love web development and affiliate marketing, and running our publishing business. But those aren't passions. I'm certainly not passionate about women's shoes, or halloween costumes, or any of the other topics that make us money.

We hear it all the time. I say it all the time.

"If you want to be successful, create a website or blog around a passion."

But I don't do that.

My God, what am I passionate about? I don't know!

I love skiing and golfing. I'm really good at the former and really bad at the latter. But I don't want to become an expert in either enough to make it a project that I try to become an online expert in and create a blog. I'm certainly any sort of authority in either.

I love coffee, and I tried that in the form of a podcast but that cooled off. (My fault. Sorry Todd.)

I love web development, technology, gadgets, and the promise of the Internet in changing our lives. But that's just too broad. Anyway, I tried that too and it failed as well.

Then there's photography. I've got an artistic side, and I love taking pictures. But likewise, photography is a technical skill that I'm just not any sort of authority on. And it takes years of study to get there.

WTF!

Is having a passion really that rare? Is it possible that I don't actually have one?

But as I was snapping photos on my iPhone the other day, I realized that there's something amazing happening there. I'm using a camera that's also a computer with an operating system. There's a whole army of people developing apps for my camera to make it easy for me to improve my pictures and then share them immediately with the world.

What an awesome thing. And I do it every day without even realizing it.

I'm always, even subconsciously, looking for that perfect shot to capture on my iPhone, thinking about how I can grab it in my little pocket camera and tweak it with the software in there.

There's nothing more satisfying to me than grabbing the perfect shot of my kids, a stranger, a branch on a tree, a cookie...

...and having the vision to apply the right post-processing to turn a plain cameraphone picture into something that might even be considered artistic.

I think maybe this is a passion that I didn't even realize I had.

Phonetography

So over this Christmas break, I set up Phonetography.com.

It is a blog about taking special photographs with a mediocre camera, making them great with fun software, and sharing them with the world. All in an instant.

If you've got a camera phone and like to use it, then Phonetography is for you. I hope you'll join me there, subscribe to the feed and newsletter, and participate in the discussion.

Or just follow along as an Internet marketer and entrepreneur starts a new website from scratch.

Do you have a passion? I mean really have a passion? If you're lucky enough to answer yes, are you doing something with it?