I can hardly believe it has been a week since my life shifted phases and I restarted the blog. I talked about habits, basically to death, in the first few months of blogging. I probably related a lot to the Little Engine that Could (that relationship is going to be renewed shortly as I am soon to start Stephen King’s The Wastelands). The early ra ra was meant to get me excited about forming this habit. Lately the feeling is more of a settling down into what is right and important in my daily life. Connect to my love, connect with my boys, generate coffee, write. This four part harmony forms the shield over my day. I can take on the world the moment I click publish.
This feeling I get of sending words out into the digital ether reminds me of the sensation of tithing or prayer. I’m giving something of myself back to the storyspace without any real expectation of physical reward. I am not doing it to get famous or even to have people read the blog. Some (one?) do I suspect, and maybe that is part of it. Maybe I cast a phrase that impacts someone in a positive way the way script diving into quote archives occasionally yields beauty. Here’s one now:
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
That gem from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. is housed at brainyquote alongside other gems from the same learned man. I believe he means to remind us that while the ocean of our opportunities is dark and chopped with frothy fear, it is only at sail that we can discover what exists outside of ourselves.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what exists within me and what I believe I need to feel whole. Those things are separate but exist as part of a larger whole. There is who I can be alone and who I can be when I am connected and loved and loving. I used to believe one form was less than the other. Now I am drifting towards an understanding that they are instead different kinds of living. I am entirely capable of living a life unto myself and absent of connection. It is not the same kind or style of life I would live should I let love in. That other life is not exactly better. It is an apple to an orange. It is a different way of being and the way I prefer.
That kind of thinking represents an evolution–a departure from a shore where I truly believed there was no life in living and being alone.
Some Thoughts:
- I intend to go to Europe in the next ten years and enjoy that part of the world. Then I’m going back to Africa for a while. Then Asia. Ten years here on the grind and then I’m out.