Lately Noticed

If you are doing the best you can at something you love, don't worry if no one seems to notice.  It may be something you love that has little to do with your work.  It may be a truer vocation than your day job. If you do what you love with the hope of being discovered or becoming famous, then you will very well stop because no one takes notice. Gerard Manley Hopkins was possibly the best poet of the English speaking world in the 19th century, but no one knew it...while he was alive.  His day job was a Jesuit priest who worked in the London slums, taught Greek and Latin in Dublin, Ireland and died at age 44 of typhoid fever in 1889.  No one seemed to know that he wrote poetry.  Then in 1918, long after his death, a fellow poet and friend published Hopkins.  His poetry has benefitted many people since being published.  We usually don't know all the people we help when we do what we love.  Maybe my Maureen stories will be published after I die?  Be still my heart.