Whatever happened to passion?

In some ways, I was born way too soon. If I had been in my 20s when blogging came around, I would have been tearing up the world with my blog, posting twelve times a day, radical thoughts that would awaken people's minds, bring lots of blogging dollars my way and make me a sex god to women. Yes, I know, there were venues to do just that in the late 70s early 80s and I failed to take advantage of those, but don't harsh my high, man!

Anyway, this is just an oblique way of tackling the damping of the creative fire that used to course through my body, and one of the ways that I literally used to define myself. In my heyday, I was an unstoppable creative force - I wrote a novel, many short stories, poems, hundreds of songs, dozen of movies. When I had a creative buzz going on, when my mind was on fire from ideas, it was a better high than almost any of the drugs I took (oh yeah, I was doing those too). Why I never became famous from any of my endeavors is another subject, and let's face it, better folk than I never succeeded.

But somehow somewhere that flame kind of sputtered. Was it working a regular job (my favorite excuse?) Was it taking up Zen practice, which convinced me that all this was attachment? Was it finding that everything I was doing was something I had done before (sure seemed like it). Having a dog who wakes me up at dawn no matter what time I went to sleep? Was it just, well getting older? Whatever, I have found (as I mentioned in a previous post) that a lot of the things that I thought I valued about myself I just don't do much anymore.