I am so glad we have continued to connect outside of LiveJournal. It’s beem great tpo see you grow…and your sage advice always hits right where it should.

It’s hard to keep a passion that is always being kicked during part of your day. I used to do graphic design all day. I showed a client what they should use, they hack it to bits with bad ideas and perversions of color to make it truly a less brandable image. Customer is king I suppose but carving a lot of creative energy out to make something then have it bastardized is generally hard to callous completely. Regardless it saps your energy and patience. In turn then I stopped doing art at home because I was too exausted. This left me very unfufilled though. I felt like I was abusing a part of myself for a dollar. Eventually I realized that I wanted to keep my creativity alive and I stopped doing design for a living. Now everything creative is just for me or those around me. I’m generally the critical customer in my world and it’s liberating to create, study, critique, without the overhead of drama.

Life is about learning and applying what you learn to eeke out some niche. It’s easy to pick up skills and use them instead of those things you hold dear.

The other thing I could point out was being a physical trainer and watching myself care less about the gym from being in the place too much. Eventually retiring that trade so I could stay passioned about self as well. If it’s not a dramatic affair it could be just too much of any thing is a bad thing…

Regardless the more you save for yourself the more you can give qualitatively to others through your efforts. Find that compass inside and you do what is right for #1 (#1 is you btw ).

-a