I usually start each blogpost with a sense that I'm about to write a letter to a friend. Today I'd like to begin by addressing the blank page before me. Even with the full-blown return of good health, I didn't feel quite right one year ago. I'd never felt rudderless before, but I did last January.
My young friend ej unintentionally inspired me to start this blog, for she had been sharing laughter and tears for months already in her "emotional maintenance" blog, and while I knew I'd never be as amusing as she, ej's courage to write and her tenacity at keeping it going were the nudge I needed to open a blank page.
Zowie, what a flow began! And the freedom I felt, writing whatever I pleased and then sending out the post like a letter in a bottle, thrown out to sea. Bamboobear vividly reminded me every time I sat to write how enjoyable the act of carrying images, thoughts and words from my lively noggin to whomever cared to read them could be. Writing for writing's sake. Yum!
As one post led to another, I began to learn how best to set forth, and then to maintain, a line of thought. By telling stories, I got fresh perspective on why these memories have remained so vivid for me. I've begun to gain in humility, as I own up to my mistakes and experience anew how many gifts I have been given all along the way.
Knowing that I'm not "subjecting" anyone to too much this or not enough that, I felt free to rant and to memorialize. To be angry and to be trivial. To be racy and to be discrete. And I got to practice what I'd been preaching for five or six decades. Follow your heart. Mistakes are your friends. Learning new words is downright exciting! Shame and blame are dead-end streets. Forgiveness is liberating.
Glory be this clearing in the woods. I can see the big full moon. And there, on the pyracantha, dripping with fire red berries, a flock of puffed up red robins covers the bush, chirping and chatting, until all at once they are gone, and the bush is bare.