Lovin' What You Do

I was walking through a big box store this weekend when I saw a pillow with the words “do what you love, love what you do” embroidered on the front. Now I’ve heard the statement before, but for some reason it seemed to get me to thinking about if I’m living my life this way. This is probably because I’m of a certain age. I’m no longer uber young, but I still have more than twenty years of work ahead of me before I can retire from my day job. Plus, I’d been having heart to heart conversations recently with a friend about careers and “finding your bliss”. M. is also of that certain age. She’s starting to wonder if she should stick with her job, though she’s feeling blah about it, or try to find something doing what she loves and face the uncertainty of a new work life. Let’s all agree that doing what you love might not pay the bills. And we all have bills, big ones.

 I like my 9 to 5 job just fine, but I can’t say that I love it. I do however love writing. Okay, that is a bit of an untruth. There is an adage that authors don’t love writing, we love having written, and in my case this is doubly true. I find my favorite part of being a writer isn’t putting words on the page, but creating characters and scenarios and situations in my head. I love developing a love story; however, getting it out of my head and onto the page is a whole other story (no pun intended). But at least I get to do what I love. And I certainly love what I do. Even if I never sell another story, that won’t prevent me from coming up with people who are perfect for each other, or dreaming of how they meet and fall in love. I may never be able to do what I love to pay all of my bills, but I can certainly love do what I love to feed my soul. I hope you too are doing what you love as much as you can to feed your soul.