Gumball Machine

Many people have their thing.

The thing that defines them –

Makes them whole.

The thing that people associate with them,

To the point that it becomes a main descriptor.

Oh, you know Debbie,

She crochets.

Light pink.

Yeah, Alice – always with her skateboard.

Dark blue.

Some people have a few things.

Perhaps their work thing and their hobby thing.

Marcel? Yeah, he makes great pizzas,

And he always seems to be practicing soccer.

Bright red and dark green.

That’s Joy – the nurse who always finds time to play her guitar.

Light blue and dark purple.

Passion comes in all forms –

All colors.

Embrace all the things that make you you.

That is what we are told.

And people do it successfully.

Alice proudly wears her suit of dark blue.

Marcel happily shows off both his red and his green.

Some host three, four, or five passions,

Which often leads to them changing suits from time to time.

One day, green and purple,

Another day, yellow and orange.

Maybe a smattering of purple always lingers.

Each passion gets its due expression.

For me, the color changes can happen too fast.

Some might say there are a few too many in the mix.

My interests span such a wide range,

That I may be the only one to know them all.

I bake – most people know me for this.

Yellow.

I write – few know me for this.

Black.

I practice Pilates.

Sea green.

Music inhabits a special place in my being.

Royal purple.

Sustainability is deeply important to me.

Brown.

I have a passion for language learning.

White.

My mind can crank out ideas for comedy sketches.

Orange.

Even just the facets I have mentioned,

Make clear that my pool of interests can be hard to manage.

To rotate my passions,

To give them all comparable attention,

Would mean to abandon some for long stretches.

But what is a rainbow without the color red? Even temporarily?

As I grapple with a way to unite my passions,

Into a more manageable few,

I will continue to think of them all as different colored gumballs,

Simultaneously occupying space in the gumball machine of my mind.