Love what you do

We’ve all heard or read these words, probably many times. “Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Which I believe is absolutely true and, in a perfect world, we’d all spend our lives in the careers we’ve chosen, doing what we love to do. Spoiler alert: It’s not a perfect world. Sometimes, “life” has other plans for us.

My mother was an intelligent and creative woman who, I’m convinced, could’ve become anything she wanted to be. She was the fifth child of ten and grew up during the depression. At age fifteen, she was forced to quit school to take care of her younger siblings. She’d just started high school and was so excited about it. But it wasn’t meant to be.

Eventually, it was time for her to find a job and that’s where she met my father. They were married and, while she raised four children, she was a stay-at-home mom. Sadly, my parents divorced when they were in their mid-forties and my mother needed to find a job. With a limited education, through no fault of her own, the jobs she found were low-paying and, sometimes, back-breaking. But I never heard her complain. Not about the jobs and not about her lot in life.

Instead, Mom enjoyed everything she did and she gave it her "all." When I asked her how that was possible, that surely she couldn’t like everything, she replied, “Of course I can. It’s easy. I make up my mind that I’m going to enjoy whatever it is I have to do and I do.” She wasn’t kidding. It really worked for her.

I don’t claim to like everything I have to do – a couple of household chores come to mind - but, whenever I start to complain, mostly to myself, about doing something I’d rather not do, I remember my mother’s words. “I make up my mind that I’m going to enjoy. . . "

From the time I was ten years old, my dream was to become a published writer but, like most people, I needed to earn a living. I was fortunate to have worked at jobs I enjoyed. (It’s interesting that some of my experiences at those jobs and some of the people I met have been “fictionalized” and they appear in my books.)

Anyway, through the years, I never stopped pursuing my dream. I took every writing class I could find, read voraciously and wrote whenever possible. Fifty-two years later, my first Malone mystery was published and now, with eight published novels - I'm working on the ninth -  I’m finally doing what I love to do.