If only passion could be used as currency.

Time to make a quick judgement call.

Do I write what I feel like writing and risk upsetting people close to me?

I evaluate the risk and decide how big it is, how much it means to me not to upset someone I care about. I weigh this against my need for the sort of catharsis that, as I know from soming up to a year's worth of experience, only blogging can bring.

I can say without hesitation that it means a lot to me not to upset someone I care about.

I do, however, feel that the catharsis afforded by writing here is one that I cannot find elsewhere.

I do not dwell on the implications of this fact.

I want to write about my career.

Perhaps with all this talk of uspetting people one might perhaps have assumed I was going to talk about my love life, my friendships or my family. Perhaps my housemates or my work colleagues, the lady in the shop around the corner from work. I would not want to upset any of these people. Particularly the latter. Speaking English might not be her forté, but we have a relationship the delicate balance of which I would not wish in any way to disrupt.

Without going into detail about the specifics of the situations, which I am opting not to at this moment, I feel the need to reassert to myself what it is that I want out of my career. I am only doing this for myself.

I want to sing beautiful music, with real instruments, on stages. Stages with lights and microphones. Which, I suppose, goes without saying. I want people to listen to what I do and what my band does and what WE do. I want them to listen and think to themselves that this is something that means something, that is evocative of something.

Sometimes I listen to music and it moves me. Or, more specifically, it moves something in me. Simon and Garfunkel does that to me, as does Jeff Buckley. Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat. Hallelujah. I actually prefer the Jeff Buckley version. The Elgar Cello Concerto. Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit. There's this jazz singer called Carol Kidd who sings Autumn In New York and merges it seamlessly into My Funny Valentine and it makes me want to laugh and cry every single time I hear it. So many different versions of Summertime. There's this band called Feist whose album I was given a copy of, and it is wonderful. http://www.arts-crafts.ca/feist/.

There is all this music that amazes me. All these musicians who are imbued with the capacity to make me feel like my soul is too big for my body and I might just explode, or take off, or disintegrate. Jill Scott, the live album. Rachelle Ferrel.

There have been a couple of times in my life, perhaps more than a couple, when I have felt that feeling from something I've been doing. From music that is coming from me. It's a sort of tantric, circular ecstasy.

I want, for the rest of my life, to do that.

I know I am blessed because I can do it. I have done it.

I know what it is to feel that, and it is so addictive and perfect that I cannot do anything that risks eliminating that possibility.

I simply cannot. I will not settle for not-close-enough.

I am stubborn, perhaps. I don't care. If you had felt what I feel when it is right you wouldn't settle for second best, either.

People encourage me to take every opportunity that is presented to me, to snap up every offer because it's a 'way in'. That, my friends, is utter shit. I refuse to do something that seems from the outside to be in the same ball park as what it is that I want to do with my life. If it takes me twice as long to do it the way I want to, with the dignity and integrity I will feel from having refused to compromise on those things that I hold onto like precious jewels, then so be it. I can see happiness and fulfillment, and I am beginning to be able to to trace the outline of the path down which I must travel to be able to achieve it.

I sometimes feel cursed because I feel like I have a calling, and I cannot waver from that, even if it means compromising in so many other ways.

Deep down, though, I know am lucky.

I will not be moved.