Passion...

It's Thursday, and the week is nearly over....I love Thursdays!  It is the last night for our dinners, and I always feel a sense of satisfaction for a job done well...Reflecting over the last three nights and all that goes with it, I know tonight will complete the week for me, and it feels really good!

I am sleepy this morning!  Coffee is almost ready, so I will be perking up shortly....Yesterday, I started to write about a blog I had read regarding "Passion", and then it got too late to complete my thoughts...

But that is okay, I think I gave you the set up of sorts...it is important that you know something about the character of the friend, of whom I am writing about - maybe yesterday's blog did that...

Passion....I always think of passion as something that enhances the project you are focusing on.  You know how it is...you choose to do something, usually willingly (I hope), so do you just go through the motions, or are you passionate about it?  And is this passion that you feel healthy or not?  Is going at every project, situation or relationship full throttle a little manic?  And is this behavior just a part of someones character, or is it acquired like learning to be more patient, or loving?

Hmmmm....I think I am a passionate person.  I think I am a loving person, but there are degrees...and I am more passionate about some things than others.  I can't just blanket every situation with the same amount of intensity....I think there is a name for someone who does, and not to be mean, but "drama whore" comes to mind...yeah, I DID just write that...

Life presents me with things I could get all worked up about...I could apply my passionate nature and blow up, or react negatively...lash out at others, or even hurt myself.  I can instead choose to direct my passion away from some things and toward others.  If can choose where I want to focus my energy, I can put it towards what benefits the majority, instead of squandering it on something that maybe becomes an indulgent addiction. Most addictions come from being passionate about something and expecting a long term reward, but not receiving one.  It is that hope that the occasional spark/high you feel will continue.

Is there an infinite amount of Passion?  I think so, but unless you are able to focus on the reward of all that energy you have expended, you will burn out.  Passion needs to be recycled.  You can't just focus your attention on something or someone, and expend all of this passion towards it/them and not hope for some kind of reward...if you get nothing in return, then you move on..to the next subject/person, etc...

In thinking about it, you need to choose wisely where you place all of that energy...otherwise you risk becoming a "DW"...riding a roller coaster of emotions created by the amount of passion you expend on any one situation, or project...there has to be a reward for all of that passion, and finding something rewarding-pleasurable even, is the key!

I think we often confuse love/hate with passion.  We think because we expend so much energy towards something or someone, that we are showing LOVE or hate even...it is just energy.  A loving energy or a negative energy...getting worked up in a positive or negative --it is all the same.  It is all DRAMA...if you let it be.

Ahhhhh...so what am I passionate about?  What is fulfilling in my life?  I guess that is what self reflection is about...to gauge what I want to focus my passionate nature towards...right now it is my cause.  I find assisting people with a meal, and coordinating our group of volunteers rewarding.  I have chosen to expend all of this positive energy towards making other people's lives better.  I give a lessor amount of passion towards other aspects of my life, which are rewarding to a different degree, and so on, and so on....

So, where am I going with this?  Here....

Passion, it is how I weather life's storms...I adjust my sails by choosing what I want to focus on...where I place all of my passionate energy!

This morning I better put a little more energy into getting my butt to work, or I am going to be late...time to go....

Writing again...

Yawn......5am finds me up, and getting the beans on for tonight's dinner.  Last night there were over 350 hungry mouths to feed, so I have a whole lot of beans to make for tonight!...Lord knows, I hate it when we run out...Sitting in front of my little desk, which shares space in my smallish dining room, I feel like the captian of my "ship"...(smile), from here I can hear the sounds of the beans begging to simmer, and my nine cup bialetti working on my morning espresso....

I have tried coffee many ways and I always go back to my bialetti...and yeah, nine cups!  I drink at least four cups of espresso each morning. Now mind you, these are not "cups" of espresso...but I guess it would be more like four "shots" of espresso...enough to get my motor running!!  The other four or so, I will save for when I get home from work, if Gianni hasn't gotten to them first!...

I love the hissing sound....ahhhhh, my bialetti has a bit of a gasket leak...I could get a new gasket, and one day I will...but there is something nice about the soft hiss, almost like a tea kettle, and once the hissing stops, unlike a tea kettle I know my espresso is ready....

Hmmmm...earlier I read a friends blog...Friend?
I guess truth would be more like old lover, and yet that is not really true either...companion, would be better...maybe even soulmate.  Not in the romantic, entwined forever sort of definition, but there is a connection there.  We have known each other for maybe going on 6-7 years?  7.  And yet from the beginning we clicked.

Ever have someone in your life that challenged you to be more than you knew you could be?  Showed you the world and all of it's possibilities?  Yeah, he did this for me.  His gift was his ability to coerce me out of my routine, and to introduce me to myself.  I know that sounds weird...to be "introduced to yourself"...hmmmm...how's this?...He had the ability to release my fears, to encourage me to be more than I was...to try anything and everything I only thought about, but never followed through with.  I guess that is the best way to explain it. He emboldened me to be all that I could, or wanted to be.

His lessons encouraged me to write, to start that first blog.  I also learned to dabble in photography, and to sail. I am not saying I wouldn't have found all of these outlets for my creativity at some point.  But with his tutelage I took a crash course, which has influenced my life since. I learned that there were no limitations.

So, here I sit, writing again...and ruminating over my day ahead...a day FULL- jam packed with work, and tonight's dinner...and all the things in between.  A day full of possibilities.  Ahhhh...my bialetti has stopped hissing...a sure sign my espresso is ready...

Mmmmm....espresso in hand, I am off to get ready for work, and my enfolding day....I will finish up my thoughts tonight.  You didn't think I would leave you hanging?   I bid you Adieu, for a little while...

So, here I am...two years later...

Serendipity..

Do you believe?  I sat down this morning to follow a new friend's progress on building her straw house...(see, there are more women out there like ME!)...I am enamored by Kim's beautiful place, and as I follow her progress through pictures --living vicariously through her, I come across her gypsy wagon, and her blog...and somehow once I go to her blog, miraculously my old blog pops up... serendipity.

I have wanted to write again, to start up and catch up on all that has happened in the last two years, but the last time I tried to reach this blog site, I could not sign on...I tried everything...and in my frustration I figured the universe must have been sending me a message...lol!

Well, here I am...and it is time to write again...
In the last two years I have both lost so much and yet grown because of my loss...

It is time to write, to share the beauty, the progress, the adventure of this thing called LIFE! Maybe one day in the future I will have another morning like today, a time to re-read the memories of a life both simple and not so...

Amber Lynn