What words we choose may form a picture in our own mind, but it is the picture it forms in the mind of the receiver that is important.
Tom,
It took until the third year of our marriage for me to finally understand this point from my wife.
If we all had a "delay" button in our mind and heard what we are about to say before we said it, think about how much easier our lives would be. We are almost to our tenth year, and we have learned how to speak and listen to each other. Those first few years were rough. Now she "understands" what I meant to say...most of the time.
And I understand what she hears...some of the time.
To the question at hand...
I work in the workshop for a living. Whether it's the wood shop or metal shop, my entire day from breakfast to the midnight snack is spent there. Even weekends. During the day when the monotany of work wears on, I find myself thinking about one thing...building something for me or the family. Whether it's a bowl or piece of furniture or whatever. Being in the shop is who I am and what I do. It seems all outside activity is in support of this. My guess is that anyone with a passion for something will find that their "off" time is directly related in someway to that passion.
My wife works in an office and begrudgingly goes to work each day. Her passion is not for her job.
We are working on getting that taken care of.
