Wisdom.

I also posted this on my other blog, lisaswanderingfeet . . . it merits the very rare double-post because I think this may very well be my mantra for the next several years:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You merely have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate *you*. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased . . .
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Martha Graham
Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham

My friend Jay shared this quote with me the other day. We were discussing my realization that my career is the source of the deep level of dissatisfaction that has been gnawing at me for some time. Now that I am working for a law firm I truly love, with people I truly like, I know it isn't the setting (at least, not this setting), but the work, which is at the root of this dissatisfaction. I like certain aspects of my work and have met some truly wonderful people through it, not the least of which are my clients. I feel blessed and continue to find an intellectual challenge after all these years. But I discovered recently that my work does not inspire in me the sort of soul-deep passion that leads one (okay--me) to relish to the tips of her toes the experience of placing Kerry-Edwards stickers on every kid she could find in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

I need to find that passion in something I do every day, something that has the added benefit of paying the bills and keeping my dogs fed. While I have toyed with the thought of a career change more times than I can count, I can tell that this time, something is different. Something inside me has shifted in a major way. The world looks entirely different to me this morning even though the view from my porch has not changed at all. Perhaps this is the kind of life-change that could only begin late at night in a hotel room in downtown Oklahoma City, when one's entire world view is somewhat skewed by the fact that she has spent five days shuttling between hotel and law firm conference room, seeing nothing but a brown and desolate downtown outside the windows. However it happened, I feel the most hope and vitality I have experienced in a long time.