"I love to cook. I wanted to learn about cooking. Forget the career. If the career happens as a byproduct of my pursuit of learning more about food and cooking, so be it."
-Charlie Trotter, chef-owner of Charlie Trotter's restaurant

We learned that work and your life's work can be separate, or they can be integrated-and they can be separate at some points in your life and integrated at other points. For most people we met, work and their life's work only became integrated later in their lives; very few people got paid to do their life's work right off the bat. But the important thing was that their life's work always had priority over their work. They figured out how to pay the bills, but not at the expense of what meant most to them.

Ann Powers, a writer and former music editor for the New York Times, talked about the idea of "dedicated poverty": "You have to be willing to live on ramen noodles for five months straight. That's how I did it when I was making no money." At any time, Ann could have gotten a sales job to bring in more money for nicer meals, but that wasn't her priority. Writing was.

Ben Younger, a filmmaker we met in New York, had a similar story. He was a successful young campaign manager in the political world, but left it all to follow his passion. "Who cares if I lived on nothing? I ate rice and beans for the next three years, but I was happier than when I had more money and a car." For years Ben worked as a waiter and did several odd jobs, all the while making short films on the side. He would go on to write and direct movies such as The Boiler Room with Ben Affleck and Prime staring Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep.

The people we met were driven by a higher set of ideals than simply receiving a paycheck. They got us thinking about what our life's work could be. Of course, we'd be facing student loans and debt when we returned from the trip and would have to deal with that, but what about our life's work? What mattered to us? What were we passionate about? What could we contribute to the world? The answers didn't come quickly, but our thinking had been jumpstarted by all of these stories, and over time our own roads would become clear.

When we were in Seattle, we sat down with Jonathan Poneman, the cofounder of Sub Pop Records (Nirvana's original record label) who had his own take on risk. "If everything in your life is characterized as 'risk versus safety,' the human instinct is to choose safety. But what if you use a whole different standard for reevaluating your life, such as 'necessary versus unnecessary.' Things like happiness, passion, and love are all necessary." From that perspective, the real risk would be not having happiness in our lives. And the idea of refocusing our lives in order to feel more fulfillment becomes less of a risk and more of a necessity.

When people told us, "It was something I had to do," what they were really saying was that the traditional risk associated with taking action in that direction was nothing compared to the internal pull they felt to bring passion and meaning into their lives. That was the "necessary" part of the equation.

This is not to say that if you take risks and try to build a meaningful life, you won't have financial instability. Most likely, you'll be scraping by in the beginning. Before Jonathan started Sub Pop, he was a janitor at the Seattle Westin Hotel and a copy manager at Kinko's. He did anything to pay the bills so he could keep working in the Seattle music scene. During that part of his life, he traded a security blanket for happiness, passion, and love. By not focusing on the perceived risk associated with that lifestyle, he ended up defining a whole new road for himself based on what mattered to him.

Our decision to hit the road in the first place definitely felt like a risk. But looking back on it with some perspective, the greater risk would have been to stay on the freeway, continuing to live lives without passion or meaning. We were too young to start settling, but it wasn't until after the trip that we realized that.

The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Several concerts on the Dixie Chicks' "Accidents & Accusations" tour have been canceled after slow ticket sales, but the group says it has replaced them with other dates.

Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville are among 14 cities no longer on the original schedule released in May, according to a revised itinerary posted Thursday on the Dixie Chick's Web site.

Other shows, including Nashville, Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix, have been pushed back to later dates.

The North American leg of the tour kicked off July 21 in Detroit. Billboard magazine and other trade publications have reported lackluster sales in some markets, particularly in the South and Midwest.

Group spokeswoman Kathy Allmand said Monday that the total number of North American dates remains the same, with several Canadian cities added in place of the U.S. shows.

The trio released a statement last week attributing the changes to attempts to "accommodate demand" and said more dates might be added next year.

The group also said the adjustments will allow them to promote the documentary "Dixie Chicks: Shut up and Sing," for the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

"We hope that our fans who were looking forward to a stop that is no longer on the tour will be able to join us at a nearby arena this fall, and we are sorry for any confusion or inconvenience these changes have caused," the Dixie Chicks said.

Many country fans criticized the band after lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience in 2003 on the eve of war in Iraq that the trio was "ashamed" President Bush was from their home state of Texas.

County radio stations dropped them from their playlists and have been slow to welcome them back, despite strong sales of their latest album, "Taking the Long Way."