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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Pursuing Your Passions

This quote of the day was delivered to my email box this morning:

"Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it."
- Julia Child

So naturally, I asked myself, "What am I passionate about?"

*  Arizona History
*  Making a difference in the lives of others
*  Writing stories
*  Freedom of movement

The first three are tied together.  Freedom of movement, I will discuss in another post.

When I think of what defines what we are passionate about, generally speaking, I think of it defined as the things we make time for.  The things we invest ourselves in.

From the minute I touched a toe down on Arizona's soil back in 1990 for a weekend vacation at White Stallion Ranch in Tucson (http://www.wsranch.com/), I knew she'd grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go.  It has been sheer joy to research her history in the years since.

I also spend a lot of time thinking about the impact we have on the lives of others.  Yes, this is about what we personally do and say in our daily lives with the tons of people we come in contact with every day, but also feel this is inextricably linked to my writing as well.

Each novel I write examines the question: "How do my characters impact those around them?  How far was their reach?  What did they do with it?"

And naturally, I choose to do that through the context of our nation's history, most of it through the history of Arizona.

So I'd like to hear your responses.  What things do you feel passionate about?  What things do you spend a lot of time thinking about, or doing?

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