Do What You Love

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Today’s *shared story* comes from soulful writer and mixed media artist Christina Rosalie

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Christina Rosalie

This is what I love to do: Make sparks. Stalk wonder. Stir ideas. Start conversations. Inspire action. Ignite joy. And while I have always known this, I spent many years preoccupied with doing what was expected of me, what was sensible, reasonable, and made other people happy. Out of college I became an elementary teacher, even though my heart was full of wanderlust, my head full of images, my notebook full of words.

It took seven years as a teacher, losing my father, the birth of my two sons, economic collapse, starting to freelance, ending my teaching career, extreme financial strain, synchronicity, uncertainty, and the willingness to reinvent everything, to even consider the wild possibility of being what I have always longed to be: An artist.

It took the kind of urgency that occurs at the storm to make me realize that the work I was doing in my scant snippets of free time -writing, painting, connecting, communicating, sharing – was the work that I wanted to be doing every single minute of the day.

This leap towards doing what I love began with asking for help, palms open to the universe. Which I did, on the spur of the moment, two years ago. And now I am here, on the brink of publishing Life In The Present Tense: A Field Guide To Now, and in my second year of graduate school; moving each day closer towards making a career with creative work at its center.

This is what all the uncertainty and turbulence, heartache and adventure of the last seven years as taught me: There will never be a better time. Tomorrow is never assured.  If you want to do what you love, take action now.

Say it out loud. Start with anything. Learn to fall, and get up, and start again. Trust the universe to respond. Leap. Make it real.

I have this quote by Goethe taped to the wall in front of my desk:

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

There are no truer words.

[All images courtesy of Christina Rosalie. Christina  is a writer and mixed media artist. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Emergent Media from Champlain College. Her first book, Life In The Present Tense: A Field Guide To Now will be published by Skirt! Books in September, 2012. Find out more about her on her lovely site 'My Topography' here]

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See here for more inspiring *shared stories*

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