Eager to proceed, I had to carry on (10)
I believe the answer is:
passionate
'eager' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'proceed i had to carry on' is the wordplay.
'proceed' becomes 'pass' (I've seen this before**).
'had' becomes 'ate' (e.g. I had an ice cream).
'to carry' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'i'+'ate'='iate'
'iate' enclosing 'on' is 'ionate'.
'pass'+'ionate'='PASSIONATE'
'to' is the link.
(Other definitions for passionate that I've seen before include "Most eager" , "Strongly emotional" , "Very keen" , "Ardent" , "Having strong feelings" .)