What fuels you?

What makes you excited to get up in the morning?
No, don't keep reading, actually stop and look up from your computer and answer that question for yourself.
Take a minute, I'll wait.

It's actually not an easy one to answer.

Or there might be so many answers that you freeze in regret and sadness at all the things you don't allow yourself to do.
It's the most important question you can ask yourself.
What are you most passionate about?
What makes you smile with the deepest satisfaction and hope that this Universe is an okay place for you after all?
What, in your wildest dreams and fantastic hallucinations, would be the best possible place for you to be in?
If you could actually dream any (sleep) dream tonight, what would happen in it?
Where would you be?
Who would you be with?
What would you be doing?
wearing?
eating?
looking at?
If you wrote the script for that dream, what would the story be?

In the movie of your life, what would be the climax?  How would it be resolved?

and if you know what that dream is, how are you making efforts to bring it into being?

I have found, in some very small examples in my life, if I can make my vision really truly fleshed out, if I can fantasize about exactly what I want, it is way more likely to happen.  Either because I see it clearly when the thread presents itself to me, or maybe my higher self takes over and lets the circumstances I need for it to actually happen. The vision really does help create the reality.

Life is so mysterious; we work, we play, we love, and then, what is there?  Some of us have projects we are proud of, a marriage that we stuck out, kids we raised, degrees or jobs we worked hard for, yet still there always is that restlessness.
I am quickly headed toward being 53 years old, and even now, when I read in the New York Times Sunday morning edition about an artist who took photos of things, I think I should be trying that.  or I read of a writer who travels and studies Zen and think I actually need to change direction and should be doing that.  The truth is, I don't know what I want to do, I have tons of ideas, but not really a clear vision.

I want to clarify my life dream, and I will be using my journal to help.
I have  couple of decades of work ahead of me (if I am lucky) and I really want to make this section of my life count, I want to do what my truest calling is, not just piddle away these years with small-ish projects; hours of Facebook browsing, making a greeting card or two for a friend, or straightening up the house.

I'll report back with news, when it comes.
(and in the meantime, here is a black swan, an ink sketch from my recent trip to a Buddhist Temple and gardens in Oahu.)

"The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that I have found what I was searching for without ever having discovered what it was."
--Peter Matthiessen