Poverty and Passion

Laura here. So I've never had a blog before. I always figured blogs were for the attention-hungry and self-obsessed... so I guess its high time I got one. For my very first blogging post ever, I choose the topic of: (drum roll please)..... poverty and passion. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Isn't it funny how often those two things go together? Starving artists, bankrupt lovers, dirt-poor researchers... and then on the other end of the spectrum, you have rich bored bankers and lawyers and CEOs. Can they really be that passionate about numbers or laws or selling things? I feel like I have to choose between a life of security and responsibility and a life of poverty and passion. If all I had to take into consideration was my own well-being, I would choose poverty and passion in a heartbeat. Sometimes I imagine myself a poor marine biologist on a small research boat - wind whipping through my hair and salty air slapping my face as we track a pod of whales on their migratory route, the only force standing between them and extinction. Dustin is in the back of the boat analyzing optical data he downloaded from satellite on the consistency of microfauna in the surrounding water to help us find the most likely places for the whales to feed, and we are so happy we don't mind sleeping in a box near the beach or being up to our eyeballs in debt. But it's not just me I have to consider. It's easy enough to choose poverty and passion for one's self, but what gives one the right to choose it for one's spouse and (someday) kids? To make my kids live in a cardboard box for my passion seems a bit selfish. I know that the solution is, as usual, neither of the extremes but somewhere in the middle (not too poor, not too responsible), but that's easier said than done. Maybe teaching high school biology is the perfect compromise - still making a difference but having a real job, and helping people as well as animals. I guess I have plenty of time to figure it out. In the meantime, if you need me I'll be on my boat (whale sighting at two o'clock, starboard side!)