"What do you do to encourage your passion?"

At the end of a great lecture I attended yesterday afternoon, the speaker asked us to take a few minutes to free-write an answer to a question we picked up on the way in. Since my brain is a bit too fuddled to share anything deeply intellectual, and I definitely haven't looked at a political headline in about a weeks (although, I did meet another writer from Minneapolis and we had an extensive conversation about how terrible Michelle Bachmann is), I'll do something different and share this with you. My question:

What do you do to encourage your passion?

(here, passion refers to "writing")

My answer:

I read read read like a madwoman / I read Richard Brautigan and think about California in the 1960's / about Minnesota now / about Germany where and when my mother was born / where and when I was born / I read and then I write in journals made of recycled paper / I read and then I write in the office that I painted tea-chest brown / and in the next room she's still sleeping on her belly in her crib in her purple, footed pajamas that say "angel" and she sighs and I listen.