Labor vs. Passion: Thoughts on Labor Day

Labor Day has always been a strange holiday for me. For most of my early life it meant 2 things — a picnic and getting ready to go back to school both of which I liked. Now that I live in Gloucester it means 2 things also — the tourists start leaving and the Schooner Races. Both of which I like.

I have nothing in particular against tourists except it will be nice to be able to once again go to my favorite restaurants and not wait in line for a table, to go to the beach and not have it crowded with noisy folks with boomboxes and attitude, to actually be able to drive across town without getting yelled at and cut off by cars with strange license plates. But I remind myself that I live in a town that people save all year to spend a week in so I should be patient.

The Schooner races (left) are another story. They are beautiful. I wish they had them all the time. The Friendship (above, right, with the USS Nitze) was here from Salem yesterday. That is one of the loveliest three-masted, square-rigged schooners you could ask for. Clare and I watched from Jane’s front porch. Jane lives on top of a hill with one of the best views of Gloucester Harbor you could ask for.

But what happened was we started talking about passion and being over-fifty and so on fire with ideas and creative energy that we don’t how we ever lived another way. It was a wonderful conversation.

Clare grew up near New York City and spent most of her life commuting into downtown NY and spending long hours at a corporate job. Three years ago she left New York and moved next-door to me. She took a job that pays half of what her former job did but gives her time to write plays and design. In three years she has written several short plays. One of them, Queer Bent for the Tudor Gent, a satire in Shakespearian verse, has been produced in New York and Sydney, Australia. She is now working on a musical adaptation of a popular fifties horror movie (it’s a surprise) with the permission of the movie’s producer, and she has started a line of products ranging from t-shirts to coffee mugs featuring her original renditions of modern art classics only with cats. Take a look at Modern Art Cats.

Jane graduated from Simmons and worked for years in the Boston publishing industry. She founded her own small press (this is a cautionary tale for other small press owners) and wound up getting sued, twice. The second lawsuit has been a ten year nightmare for her and resulted in the largest settlement against a publisher that she has been able to find evidence of. Her life has been a torn apart and, now that the last of the countersuits has been settled, she is taking a much needed break from litigation worries — her finances devastated — to write a book about the entire experience. I have read a few of her chapters and all the small presses and independent publishers need to read this book! She is beginning it as a blog at BESTSELLER!

I, of course, am still writing, still working, still designing, working on the cookbook blog — broke all the time because of all my passions but happy nonetheless. So we got talking about the joy of transforming all our challenges and trials and disappointments into exciting work that has grown into such intense passion that it transcends what we had to go through to get here. It is exciting stuff.

So on Labor Day I am working — working on my new book, working on the cookbook blog, working on a new secret project. It is work but it is not labor — it is a holy fire, a divine passion for creativity and communication. It is a sacred quest that is constantly fulfilling. I wish you a passion of your own.

Thanks for reading.