“I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.” – Thornton Wilder
What you do is exactly that… “what you do”…the secret is asking why you do it…most of us at the core will say it’s to survive…pay the bills…the car payment…the house…etc…really it is to afford the necessary luxuries to maintain a particular look and position…I don’t think most of us would say that…but would agree with it…if tomorrow…the cell phone and laptop were missing…the dominoes will fall a great deal faster than before…to keep all of the look requires one of 2 things…work to make it happen and do anything that keeps the ship afloat…or do what you are passionate about and drive that the direction of producing income…
Income is more than money and bank balances…income is time…what the time you have is worth and more so…what are you going to do with that time…
most people will live their lives working to meet an end… and often the unspoken is… “When I get there…I can do what I really want”…and maybe the time spent getting there has clarified the “What I want” …yet chances are the “What I want” is kind of like a high school sweetheart…that never worked out…the fantasy far out weighs the reality…the passion stayed there while you moved on….
Exceptional people have and are finding ways to make their passion a real…producing entity that gives them the ability to create what it is they want in all aspects of their lives…many of the people we admire are also the people who have followed their passion and made what they love doing…simply…work…granted… “Simply” does not mean easy nor without work but they took what they love and made it into something they get to do everyday of their life…
What is your passion…how does it translate from the Ideal to the Real…is it something you do everyday…or are you waiting for something else to end so you can begin…what are you doing about what you are passionate about….do you have a plan…a place to go with it…an adventure…waiting to happen…
“Be careful going in search of adventure – it’s ridiculously easy to find.” – William Least Heat-Moon
Noise from the High Desert 
Thanks for that Robert. …”What is your passion…how does it translate from the Ideal to the Real…”
Passion is like a pain or a toothache that is with you, sometimes in the background, so long that you don’t really realize it when it is gone. If a passion is a “strong and barely controllable emotion” then I’m free and I guess I didn’t realize it.
Perhaps, in the end, all I really wanted was to be comfortable with being magnificently unexceptional and embracing the reality that nothing I could or, in the minds of others, “should” care about really mattered at all… a micro-second after I was dead.
Here I am at the foot of the Blue Ridge being and smiling… being and smiling.
I trust you are well Robert.
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Passion for me is exactly like a dull pain…a wonderful distraction….beating the polygraph due to the tac in my sock…that without it I’m wondering what’s next…it is the device that says I will not do certain things and in lieu of those certain things I’m not doing…I’ll trade the not doing them for something I really want to do…kind of a like optional cosmetic surgery -vs- staying the same me…without all of the stitches, meds and return visit to see what I might be…for a few weeks….rather than knowing it all instead….
My passion…is doing what I want to do…and that evolutionary process of being in the middle of the mix….Ideal…is the process with a capital P …real…the same process just a little slower….and sometimes like the Word Jumble…
There is really something desirable about being exceptionally…unexceptional as the result truly doesn’t matter…and the thoughts…ideas…cares all seem a bit like debris in a dust devil…
I imagine the winter has gripped the Blue Ridge…here we are drinking more tea at night…wondering what wearing shorts felt like…all is very good…I hope all is wonderful in your world…
be well….
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Robert….. have you seen this video?
It’s 25 degrees here at the foot of the Blue Ridge this morning. Only a few days till the earth tilts back the right way. Happy Solstice Old Boy.
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