The last time I created a blog, I was motivated by fear. I’d just finished graduate school, my Creative Writing MFA in hand, and there was nowhere to go but to the blank screen. I wanted it to serve as a safe space to find my voice. Despite the time I’d spent in school, and a life’s worth of reading and creativity, I had no idea how to come confidently to the page and share what mattered to me. Despite the fact that I’d invested so much in the process of learning how to do it, my education still wasn’t complete. In many ways I’d have to be my own teacher.
That first blog was a sort of ongoing documentation of learning how not to take myself too seriously, how not to take rejection too personally, how not to cling too tightly to my own ideas. That blog was a means for me to follow my curiosity by going deeper down paths that called me whether or not I knew where they’d lead. More than a hundred posts later, that vehicle had run its course, my skin a bit thicker, my mission accomplished.
Today, I’m interested to see how this return to blogging will serve as a container for my continued exploration of new paths of inner and outer adventure. As inner exploration goes, I’m currently nearing the end of a two-year mindfulness meditation teacher training program and it’s proving to be a whole lot less peaceful than I thought when I started. It’s a journey that keeps surprising me in the demands it makes and the myriad ways it kicks my ass on the path to greater self-awareness. Sometimes, people, growth is messy, and it’s the only path if you ask me. Speaking of paths, as an outdoorist, I get into nature nearly every chance I get, and the experience always teaches me something new about myself, my place(s) in the world, and my responsibility to care for it.
I can’t promise I’ll be blogging every week at such and such time, but I can assure you I’ll keep returning. Matsuro Emoto wrote a book about Secret Life of Water and this passage struck me because it speaks to the messiness of growth, change, and adventure, and I’m here for it all: “If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.”
Welcome.