Something Worth Living For

I'm working on a production gig right now, and a couple of the women that I work with mentioned that they would love to work with Oprah at her new OWN network. Someone else in the office has a friend who works for one of the shows, and apparently, is working harder than she has ever worked on anything in her life. She. is. exhausted. Both women said they still would love to work for Oprah.

I really like Oprah and all, but that didn't sound like a good time. When I do production work (like today), I usually get there around 9:30, and leave at 7:30. Close to the production, the hours tend to be 9AM-midnight, give or take an hour. I always end up sick afterwards, no matter how much echinacea or Emergen-C I take. Work more hours than that?? I don't think so.

I started thinking about Oprah, and how hard she has worked to get where she is. Reminds me of that quote "The harder I work, the luckier I get." (-Samuel Goldwyn) It is very, very rare for success to be by accident. Even rarer is for someone to become successful at something they want to do and STAY successful at it. In order to work as hard as she has for as long as she has, her fuel must be more than just physical. She must really love what she does (for more than just monetary reasons) - if she doesn't, she just wasted almost 30 years of her life that she can't get back. I don't believe that to be true.

Every single moment of our lives presents us with choices. Each choice is a fork in the road, and we can't take more than one at a time. If we start down one path, and decide it isn't the right one, we can choose something that looks like the original path we decided not to take, but it will never be quite the same.

That led me to: "Is there anything that I love so much that I would be willing to give everything for it?"

The answer was unusually swift: "Creative Freedom." The ability to express myself in a creative manner. Like Mahatma Gandhi, "I want freedom for the full expression of my personality." More than anything, that's what fuels me in life. Hours upon hours disappear when Im working in a theatre, or on set. When I'm writing, or painting. Anything creative, really - it all comes from the same place. Life without creative expression, for me, would be a life sentence.

What fuels you?

--Nicole