Passionate

Day 51. Passionate.

If there's one word I would use to describe myself, that would be it. Passionate. About everything. Nothing worth doing can be done halfway. ALL IN. You can't expect the best when you don't give your best ALL IN. If you're not will to risk everything, you'll never have anything. ALL IN.

One of my passions is of course, writing. The opposite of that is another: reading. I've been a avid reader my whole life. My Gramma Tut worked for Doubleday Books, and she would always bring home lots of books she bought at the employee sales. There were always kids books and always some of the classics. She had an awesome set of all the classics, leatherbound special editions, on bookcases in the living room. I read them during the summers I spent up there as a teen. I have a pretty big collection now, paperbacks mostly. My favorites are science fiction, spy thrillers, and military fiction. Big fan of Nelson Demille, Dale Brown, and Terry Goodkind. But I read almost anything, except the romance fluff.

Another passion is racing. All the series. From the modifieds that race at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, to the trucks, MotoGP bikes, Red Bull planes, Formula One, the NASCAR Cup Series. If someone that knows me needs an answer about racing, I'm their gal.  I've been a fan most of my life, we started going to Charlotte and Darlington when I was a kid. I remember going to some GP races at Charlotte with my dad and Uncle Eddie, where the Porsche we were pulling for had three noses replaced and was still in it to win it. I've been to more NASCAR races than I can count. I have a collection of driver memorabilia I need to dust off, maybe the spare room will become the race room again.

We can't forget politics. I wasn't so interested until I was about 40, and started realizing how many freedoms we give up to people who would rule us. The explosion of the internet has fueled my interest: there's so much more information out there we can arm ourselves with. All it takes is a little initiative and you can become involved in something that's way bigger than any one person. I really get passionate about military matters, and abortion. I'm as big an advocate for the first as I am opponent of the second.

I am also passionate about passion. I think that the connections we make with each other as humans is what gets us through this life, into the next. We can only hope to find that someone that makes the time pass so slowly that it seems to stop. We are blessed if we find the person that's the ying to our yang, the piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has the outtie to match our innie. If we're lucky, it's a long life ahead of us, and it will get really lonely if we don't have that someone. If we're not so lucky, we have to find more than one. I don't believe all that soulmate stuff. I think our idea of a perfect relationship can change, and you can't bind yourself to a set of rules that might not always work. I do think you can have connections that are magical, and untouchable by time. Or space. Or others.

Lesson Fifty One: What are the things you are passionate about? Do you feel strongly enough about something that you'd risk EVERYTHING for it? Remember how it feels, how right it is, and realize that something worth fighting for is exactly why we're here.

679 to go...