Recreate…Reinvent…

Well I did just that.

I often question whether I have passions. I love my friends, I enjoy my chosen careers, but still inquire of myself if I really have passions. Of course I do, and so do you. What lights us up? What causes our cells to dance...give us the goose bumps? Sometimes it is simply in the moments...

I truly have passion for the isolated moments plus the exhilaration we all get when finding ourselves leaning towards enduring re-invention. Yes?

If I had listened to EVERYTHING my mom (deceased but still advising me) said, I would NOT be where I am today. Bless her loving angel soul… she dispensed a lot of advice so that I would turn out well. I DID turn out well in spite of her (OK, except for a few episodes in there) You see, Mom stressed the need to get a degree and use it. And if you didn't study/get educated for a specific thing, then never mind even considering doing other than that that in life! I used my degree to be employed as a caseworker at the welfare dept. and left there with signs of illness which were merely psychosomatic as it turned out. I got well the day I left!!

SO when the obedient eldest child (me) syndrome collided with the slight rebellion residing in me, I followed an undeniable passion rather than my “degree” and opened a flotation tank center in 1983 with every dollar I had to my name.  

Mom thought I was nuts and so did every landlord who I interviewed to rent a space to me and my business partner. Mom said, “But Suzi, you don’t know anything about running a business..you don’t have a business degree”. 

Following my passion to open a flotation tank center was certainly a left of center undertaking here in Indianapolis in 1983. It changed my life for the best… connected me to people who are in my life today, led me to my next/concurrent career… that of a massage therapist.  

This profession led me to Thailand to further my study in Thai massage… this snowballed to an innocent side trip to Bali, Indonesia where my love affair with their culture. land, food, spirituality and BATIK FABRIC by the bolt eventually led me to return. 

In the USA I did not allow myself the luxury to afford that batik clothing from Bali that I adored. Hark! When in Bali I realized I was immersed in the source for all the fabrics I had previously drooled over! 

Wow… I had found the source for this fabric, and amid a culture that I was passionate enough for to spend 36 hours getting over there! A drew my version of a picture on a napkin of a tunic I would like to make, and many details later a career organically unfolded: I began to design clothing and jewelry while in Bali. I am returning for my 23rd trip this year. Yes I had discovered a passion.

“I know, Mom, I never took an adult art class, nor a design class, nor do I know or care that first thing about fashion...what is in/what is out. God help me!”

I trusted the universe to let my passion win out.