Growing up, my house was full of discussions about sports.

My dad and brother would talk about the NHL Draft or the World Series at the dinner table, but I would often not pay attention and keep all my questions to myself. I spent a lot of my free time going to my brother’s hockey games as a child, but spent more time drawing alphabet books and decorating princess dresses than learning what "icing" and "offsides" meant. However, as I grew up, I realized that going to hockey games and baseball tournaments were fun when I had my friends with me to get invested and answer questions.

I now declare myself a huge hockey fan, with the Blues being my number one team, but I cannot name all the players on the team. I cannot name all the teams in the NHL. I cannot tell you Tarasenko’s stats or yell at a referee for not calling that play. I simply enjoy watching the game with people who get excited about it with me.

My passions don’t stop with hockey. I am also very passionate about music. Specifically, I am very passionate about Ed Sheeran’s music. I discovered his music in 2011 when I heard “The A Team” on the radio. I downloaded it, made my own cover of it on my Mac computer when no one was home, and decided I needed to hear more of his music. I downloaded + and quickly learned all the lyrics while playing the album on repeat. As time went on, I got tired of it and moved onto other music.

I missed the release of X as well as other albums that I don’t know about. However, I still followed his Instagram and wished for the day I could see him in concert and be in one of his concert pictures. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school, when I was overwhelmed with school and trying to cope with the idea of big changes coming my way, that I turned on + for the first time in a while.

Suddenly, I was thrown back into my middle school years, and I turned on my “This is: Ed Sheeran” Spotify playlist any chance I got.

Although I have all the songs on that playlist close to memorized, I’ve learned that I missed a lot of things. I didn’t follow his time away while he was writing ÷. There are multiple songs that I haven’t heard more than once (if that). I can't tell you what kind of family he has or when his birthday is. However, that doesn’t diminish how much I appreciate his work and how lucky I feel getting to listen to it.

It doesn’t matter how much you know about something when you say you’re passionate about it. What matters is that you’re passionate about something.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of being passionate means being “capable of, affected by, or expressing intense feeling,” not knowing everything about a specific topic. Many times, what makes me passionate about something is the fact that I get to keep learning more about that thing. The pursuit of knowledge is sometimes the most exciting part of life.

That’s why people share fun facts all the time! So, don’t feel bad if you love space but don’t know the difference between a meteor and a moon rock. What matters is that you are learning more and growing your knowledge of many different things.