Tales of Great Customer Service
I ordered two computer related items recently via the Internet, and both experiences have been excellent and practically effortless!

BeachCamera.com - The printer I ordered from BeachCamera on Tuesday, May 8 arrived on Wednesday, May 9. And the shipping was free - incredible!

Espow.com - I purchased a laptop battery from Espow a couple of weeks ago. A few days after the purchase, I received an email from them stating the battery was not in stock, but would be by May 17 - and would I like to wait for it? I emailed back "sure, why not?" Yesterday, a week early, it showed up in my mailbox. Awesome!!

Can I forsee a time in the future when I do all of my purchasing online? When I no longer have to run all over the place to pick up items? As I turn into a slug sitting at my computer?

It's a good thing I'm still working out at the gym!

It May Not Be Your Passion If:

#7 - You go into debt because the financial costs of practicing it are way too high.

I've spent quite a bit of money pursuing my playwriting/screenwriting career. I haven't kept exact track on how much (I knew it would hamper my creativity at the time), but I can estimate the costs as follows:

$1000 on writing seminars
$600 on airfare to Los Angeles for opening and closing weekends of Dearboy's War.
$200 on rental car fees in Los Angeles.
$250 for screenwriting software.
$150 on copying scripts.

That's $2200 - and it's a rough estimate. Granted, that's also over a number of years. Let's look at how much money I've directly made on this passion:

$500 award from the Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation.

Now it's not like I was in danger of going into debt. But as I've gotten less and less satisfaction out of writing scripts, I've certainly felt it in my wallet. Especially since those writing seminars here in DC have doubled their fees!

#1: You're in love with the idea of your passion, but you can't stand the component parts.

#2 - You and your passion have a long distance relationship (and you aren't willing to move.)

#3 - Pursuing your passion clashes big time with your personality.

#4 - In pursuit of your passion you end up doing things that might be hazardous to your health.

#5 - You say it's your passion, but you spend 100% of your "free," non-work time doing just everything else BUT working on what you say you love.

#6 - In considering your passion, you experience "Klondike Thinking."

It May Not Be Your Passion If:

#6 - In considering your passion, you experience "Klondike Thinking."

Klondike Thinking is all about "get rich quick." Like a prospector during the gold rush of the 1890's, you're preparing for the extreme discomfort of working by telling yourself "I can take the hardships for a short period of time, since the payoff will hopefully be enormous." The Klondike Thinker might:

stay in a boring, dull and dead end job and put off his dreams until retirement;
fear some initial discomfort in pursuing her passion, which keeps her from pursuing what she loves;
maintain a low level of involvement in his passion while everyone else is going full force;
throw away a perfectly satisfying life to chase a billion-to-one long shot.

The problem with this scenario? Putting too much emphasis on a specific, narrow outcome (make a ton of money, get famous, win an Oscar) and ignore the possibilities inherent in the actual pursuit. I wanted to win an Oscar for screenwriting - but I can't find much fun in writing screenplays. And I don't really want to move to Losa Angeles.

Once I realized this, I could see how I was using Klondike Thinking in pursuing my passion, and identify either what I needed to do to get where I wanted to go, or quit and pursue other interests.

Interests in which I like the panning for gold as much as, if not more than, the gold itself.


#1: You're in love with the idea of your passion, but you can't stand the component parts.

#2 - You and your passion have a long distance relationship (and you aren't willing to move.)

#3 - Pursuing your passion clashes big time with your personality.

#4 - In pursuit of your passion you end up doing things that might be hazardous to your health.

#5 - You say it's your passion, but you spend 100% of your "free," non-work time doing just everything else BUT working on what you say you love.

Living in DC
I got "you need to" at the post office the other afternoon. Curiously, the postal employee was sincerely trying to help me.

I was waiting in line, holding an envelope along with a green "delivery confirmation" sticker.

"You need to send that priority mail," he said.
"OK," I said. "I'll do that."
He then said something else that I didn't understand. Since I didn't understand it, it made me a bit cranky.
"OK, I'll send it priority mail," I said. "What else do I need to do?"
"I can do it. Come over here."

And he walked off. So, I followed, to another, smaller service counter.

The employee took my envelope and the green sticker, placed the envelope in a clear-front priority mail enveloped, processed the sticker, took my money and stapled the receipt to my copy of the sticker.

He wasn't being mean or ornery. Nothing like that. He had come out from behind his counter and was trying to get the line of waiting customers moving. A few minutes before our exchange, he directed some instructions to the customers. "If any of you have to buy stamps," he said, "you can do that at one of the machines."

Nobody moved, probably because we all had some transaction that needed a live person.

But the postal worker was definitely trying to help us out. The trouble is, he was blinded by getting the postal processes right. He approached me with a solution by telling me the problem. But kudos to him for stepping out and offering to help!

Once I recognized this, I become much less cranky and almost pleasant.