Passion

I have many passions and I will be sharing a few here. As the title and subtitle say, I believe my passions are lifetime loves. Could any of my passions make me money? I think not, but let's take a look at the list here and decide if any of the following is a dream that may make money.

I am a woman in long term recovery and what that means to me is I have not drunk alcohol or taken drugs in 40 years. I work a good solid recovery program and that means I stay positive. That means I work at posting positive, I like spending time with positive people. I ask myself when I don’t agree with someone or something, “how important is it? Is it worth my serenity to disagree or state my opinion?” Most of the time it is not. As I have grown in recovery, I have learned that my serenity is way more important than most anything else. Now, does that mean that I allow others to believe that I agree. No. It does not mean that. I just do not have to convince another to see things my way or try to convince someone to change the way they see things. I get to keep my serenity, my positive attitude, and my love of life in recovery. I am new to Vocal, and I like how I get money from people reading my material. It is not a lot of money, but it does encourage me to continue writing and submitting. I guess I could imagine doing something similar with my posts. I currently deny friend requests from single men and women, who appear to be looking for something other than my positive posts. And with that said, I am thinking I would not want to have a public site for positive posts. I have seen some public sites where there is some ugly stuff from respondents and what would that do to my positive posts? Okay, I talked myself out of going public.

I am a Minnesota (MN) sports fan from way back. Is it a passion? A definite interest and something I look forward to doing. I started listening to the Vikings and the Twins on the radio when I was probably 10 or 11 years old with my grandpa. Then as a teen, summers, when the Vikings were in Bemidji, I watched them practice. I have only gone to games live every so many years. I watched most games on television, since that is a thing. However, we don't pay for the sports channel, so it isn't a thing lately. I never considered myself a fair-weather fan as I would watch the games even when they were not winning. When my kids started playing hockey and loved the Bull Dogs and then the Wild, hockey became a game I watched. I follow the Wild now. The Twins and Vikings keep me involved, even though I watch highlights and track the scores as they play. Not the same as a youngster, but still involved. Our children have played hockey, tennis, basketball, wrestled, baseball and softball, as have many of our grandchildren. I have a large family and I was just at a granddaughter’s softball game. Her team is in the playoffs, and she is a pitcher. I do not feel the need to share some passions. I can honestly just sit back and enjoy the sport, the players, and the game.

I love riding motorcycle, the wind, the scenery, the freedom that comes along with riding. I have always enjoyed riding my own bike rather than being a passenger, since I rode my first trike, bicycle, minibikes, to my first BSA in the 1970's. For my mother and my babies, I took a break from riding my own bike until my baby turned 21. He is 42 now, soon to be 43 and I have been riding my own bike again for 21 years. The guy I was friends with when I bought my first bike said, “if you are riding with me, you won’t be buying a Harley, as I want to ride, not fix”. He admits that Harley’s have gotten more reliable over the years, although he will toss in how a guy, he knows just got a new motor or transmission for his Harley. I married this friend, and we continue to ride together. The best part is we laugh well together and he is my best friend. As we have aged our children, we have 7 together, have tried to change things for us. My daughter said, “mom, they sell training wheels for motorcycles.” What the hell? Not interested. Then, my son says, “maybe you should sell your bike and buy a convertible”. I said, “you obviously haven’t driven a convertible as it isn’t the same. I have owned a convertible. A rambler convertible before you were born.” Then one of Johns boys suggested we buy a trike. Not ready for that either. I told him if his dad gets to a point he cannot ride, I will put a side car on my bike, and he can ride in that!! Nothing saleable here. I will acknowledge that someday we will have to stop riding, and someday is not here yet.

Family and culture are my passion. I love that I was socialized in the Native American culture. I am 55% Native American according to Ancestry. My enrollment is a different percentage. I learned it does not really matter what your enrollment says if you were not socialized in the culture. There is a difference. So many of our people were adopted into non-Native homes. So many of our people were sent off to boarding schools. Do you know what it means to be socialized in the culture? I learned as a young woman. Then, it was all brought back when I first started to work for the state of Minnesota as other employees were always repeating what I said. They said it differently, but it was remarkably similar. Interpreting for me. That is what happens when you have not been socialized in the culture of the state, and I came to the state from working for Native American programs. There are all kinds of things I did not learn, that did not come natural for me and that I may never understand. That was what I learned when working at the state. I would never fit in; it would never be a place I wanted to stay for long. I would not become a bureaucrat. I did not think I would make the first year. I made twelve years. Around year eight or nine, I got cancer. Year twelve, I was old enough to retire and I did. I thought the stress of working there would kill me before I was ready to die, even though I believed I had taken a less stressful position at the end. I was considered by some at the state to be a Native American expert and by some Native American people to be a State of MN expert. I am not either, although I enjoy working as a culture consultant since I retired.

And now, getting back to Vocal. Writing is a passion. I was good at technical writing in my career. I like writing a Poem a Day in February, and reading and encouraging others writing. I have fun with contests. I join writing groups, like NaNoWriMo, where I have written three book drafts of 40-50,000 words in a month. Then, with Vocal, I enjoy making money for writing and hope to some day win a challenge. When I heard there were more than 900 submissions for one of the challenges, I thought, I will never win. I am still new to this writing business. Then I thought, the odds are way better than publisher’s clearinghouse. So, my passion for writing, may be my big dream and the reason people should support me and why I should look at the program 'Memberful' sometime soon.