An early morning walk through the downtown streets led me past a message sprayed across the sidewalk, a reminder of what we all should be doing:
Find what you love and let it kill you.
  We all have those things we have to do. We have to work to pay bills, provide for families, and acquire the things to make our lives a little more comfortable, but what do we do after the basics have been covered? What do you do after you have done what you have to do? Do you find time to do what you need to do? Are you working on an interest or following a passion?
  Passion, yeah, that’s what it’s all about; finding that passion, that thing, activity or pursuit, that gets your blood boiling and gets you excited about life. What hobby, interest, craft, or practice are you involved with as a distraction from the day in/day out?
  What lights you up, outside of your personal relationships, career, or random obligations?
  Perhaps it’s French cooking, oil painting, photography, or guitar? It may be woodworking, or collecting stamps, or jazz records, or butterflies. It doesn’t need to be what everybody else is doing, but it should be something that stimulates the less-used corners of the mind, or gets the body functioning in ways it doesn’t usually operate.
  It may be creative, or intellectual, or physically demanding, but when you do it enough, and when it clicks, you cannot wait to do more. And more. It might even become an obsession (but, like, in a good way).
  It becomes something that you do; something that makes you you. . . at least something that will inspire you to be the person you are.
  I’ve just come out of Poetry Month, a period devoted to writing nothing else but poetry. I ignore, or put off, what I probably should be doing, and for 30 days I focus deeper and further on this one subject more than the other eleven months of the year.
  I can’t totally explain why, or even how, poetry gets me thinking, and working, in ways that command this sort of attention, but I do know I love poetry (both writing and reading). As far as I’m concerned, Death by Poetry doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go.
  What’s killing you?
05/01/17                                                        j.g.l.