We all have some kind of passion, something that keeps us moving. For some people, it's playing video games. For others, it's making music. For others still, it's helping people no matter the cost.

For me, it's writing. Ever since I started writing in third grade, I knew it was going to be my life-long passion. It has been. I've had ups and downs with it, but everyone goes through rough patches with their passion. It's completely normal, and it doesn't mean that passion has died.

It simply means you need to find a way to rekindle it.

Like a long-term relationship or a friendship that's lasted years, the spark can fade. That doesn't mean you break-up with your long-term SO or stop being friends with that best friend you've had for years — it means you find ways to make it special again.

Recently, I've noticed my passion for writing has dropped. It didn't happen overnight; it took months of stress, lack of time and lack of motivation for me to realize that I no longer felt the fiery need in my core to write.

I will openly and honestly admit that one of the causes for my passion to wane has been because of HQ. There's no skirting around that issue, so I won't bother with it.

However, that doesn't mean I'll stop writing. Just like a bad video game doesn't stop people from playing them, an accident with an instrument doesn't stop a person from playing and a volunteer organization crumbling doesn't stop a person from helping others, I won't let some bad things happening with HQ stop me from writing.

I will always be a writer.

That being said, I have to figure out a new way to find my passion. I've had to rekindle my passion for writing more times than I would like to admit, so I would like to think that I have some kind of expertise when it comes to refinding your drive.

To start with: don't stop. Whatever your passion is, don't take a break from it. Cut back if you need to, but if you stop now, when your passion is at its lowest, it'll take so much longer to get back into it. You're going to think about why you stopped rather than why it was your passion in the first place.

The next step: do something new with it. Be creative with it! I may not write much fiction for Odyssey, but I'm a creative writer. I write fantasy stories, and I'm working on a novel right now. Except, I haven't really been working on it. In fact, it's kind of been ignored for a while. Which means that "something new" for me is simply "work on that forgotten project."

For you, it may be as easy as that.

It could also be as out-of-the-box as something you haven't thought about doing before but still relates to your passion. Rather than work on an old project, I could re-write a movie trailer script to be what I feel like it should have been. It's still similar enough to the kind of writing I enjoy have done in the past, but it's new and different and could be exactly what I need.

The final step: stick with it. This can be difficult, especially if you're trying something new with your passion, but it's the most important step. If you let yourself fall off again and can't pick yourself up, you'll be right back to where you were: wondering where your passion went.

Keep it alive, keep it well, because passion is what makes life beautiful.

Passion drives us to our goals, whatever they are, and passion is what makes the world so colorful. There are so many passions and so many ways to show them, yours is uniquely you and is so very necessary to the world.