What's Your Passion?

I attended a conference last year that was focused on motorcycling. We were handed cards and were asked to write what our "spark," or passion, was that got us excited about motorcycling on the card and share it with another conference participant.

That question extends to my own life in all the things I am involved with. Here are my passions:

* My partner
* My family
* My friends

Well, these are common passions for most folks. Here are more things about which I am passionate:

* My community. I am passionate about where I live, how we live, how we manage growth, infrastructure, and sustainability of our environment. I speak out, I get involved, I cajole, persuade, pester... as a local civic activist volunteer.

* Neighbors and residents of my community. Advocating for their needs, helping them out, providing service, fixing stuff, protecting them from shams and con-artists.

* Providing workforce housing. Cops, teachers, firefighters, nurses: these community heroes often can't afford to live in the county where they work. It has been my passion to try to help out in that regard, as best I can, anyway.

* Motorcycling. The freedom, exhilaration, fun, excitement. Man, nothing quite describes the feeling one has when you're out on the open road with a group of fellow bikers, enjoying the scenes, scents, and sounds.

* Justice. I rail against social injustices that I observe, and try to right them. Rally folks to the cause. Make things better, one step at a time.

* Intelligence. You might look at this in a number of ways -- from railing at dumb-dumbs who abandon shopping carts in handicapped parking spots or who drop trash wherever they damn well please, to having a spirited conversation and exchange of ideas, to having the desire to study to become a U.S. citizen, to acting and behaving with common sense. I'm not talking about "book smarts" as much as I am talking about people thinking before they act, and acting with intelligence.

* Honor and Integrity. No need to explain that. I just am passionate about these values and practice them every day.

* Smiles. Lighten up, folks! Oh my gosh, so many grim faces I see every day (probably because they're stuck in suits and ties). S-M-I-L-E!

So, what's missing from the list?

* Boots -- that is my avocation. Hobby. Fun thing to talk about, wear, build websites and blogs about... sure, I enjoy boots but I'm not wrapped (or warped) 24/7 about them.

* Leather -- same goes with leather, too. A waning avocation. (Waning in the sense that I've grown beyond leather fetishism as I've blogged often about.)

Some other things are missing from the list, too, such as sports, television, movies and the dramatic arts, and stuff like that. There's just so much time in the day, and I choose to dedicate my time to my passions. I am just not that passionate about these things as some others may be.

So, what's YOUR passion? (Thanks to my eighth brother for inspiring this blog post)