One of the final items on the Passion Pays the Bills list is Sharing.

Sharing has actually snuck into many of the previous posts. Talking about your thing is a way of sharing it. Thanking people for the ways in which they help involves sharing your appreciation. And asking people for help is sharing, too.

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Writing this blog series has let me practice sharing.

More important, it’s let me practice sharing in an improvisational and imperfect way. It’s helped me continue to practice my biggest improvisational lesson — finding a place to begin and then figuring it out as I go.

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As I’ve mentioned (once or twice *wink*), I prefer to operate out of the limelight. I like to work out all the details ahead of time and in private and then present a perfect, polished finished result. Studying spontaneous singing helps counteract that tendency (at least some of the time *smile*).

Case in point, I had no idea what the posts of for Passion Pays the Bills would be like. I just posted the list and then challenged myself to expand on it.

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Once I was in it, however, I could start to see a path. Kind of like untangling a ball of yarn. You can’t work it out by looking at it, you’ve got to get in there and starting pulling strands. The important part is picking up the yarn in the first place.

If I had forced myself to write the whole series before sharing it with you, we would be starting a new year without anyone having read any of these posts. (Because I wouldn’t have written them.)

Giving myself permission to write one post at a time — often not knowing what I was going to say each week until I finished the post — let me explore what each topic meant to me and to articulate what I’ve learned.

(It’s interesting that the posts that were the hardest for me to write were the ones that garnered the most response. It was as if these slippery topics — talking about your thing, asking for help and using what you know — resonated so strongly because they were … well … slippery.)

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But, to be honest, when I jotted “share what you know” on the list, I meant sharing in a more direct way.

Sharing resources and information and time and energy. Cooperating and collaborating to support other people in their passions while you grow your own.

Becoming a helper, mentor, consultant or expert are all ways to share what you know and help your passion (and your bank account) grow.