Love is a wonderful thing. Wait, that's not right. Love is a many splendored thing. It also makes the world go round, so they say. But then again there is that ditty - Love Stinks. But you know, this little piggy thinks that's just all fine and dandy too.

It's not even close to Valentine's Day and I'm thinking about love this morning. Not for people or even for the little dogs sitting at my feet gazing up at me with adoration. There's a good reason, I'm not equating love with their canine stares. I have a bowl of cereal on my desk and they know it.

"Give us the cereal bowl," their laser eyes beam into my brain, "and nobody gets hurt."

No, I'm thinking about how much I love what I do. I don't think I think about that point enough. In fact, when I get really busy, if I have deadlines or a tough consignment piece to complete or if my teaching schedule suddenly blossoms into something that looks like the man-eating plant in "The Little Shop of Horrors", then I can feel overwhelmed, put-upon - resentful - and that's a long, long way away from love.

And that's a shame. Because I'm wasting all that creative time feeling negative when I could be savoring every single micro-second of what it feels to be able to have a job like this.

I have been extremely busy this summer and I did fall into a kind of do or die funk. I was going to get things done even if it killed me. But this last weekend someone said to me, "You're so lucky. You must love what you do."

My first instinct was to launch into a litany of "poor me, I'm such a pathetic martyr, suffering for my craft". But then I realized the truer answer would be "poor me, I'm such a pathetic martyr, suffering for my crap". Because that's exactly what that type of thinking is.

I am lucky. Oh, it wasn't just luck that allowed me to make my living drawing, writing, or working with others that want to learn to draw or write. I put the time and energy in and there have been lots of dark nights of the soul when it was hard - but the love of it all kept me hanging in there.

And now that love has settled into an old-friend type of love. It's comforting. It's constant, but just like when something outrageous or hilarious flies from an old friend's mouth, that old love can surprise you, shock you, challenge you and make you fall in love all over again.

I am lucky. I write and draw-therefore

I love.