You have a blog?

“You have a blog?”  “Well yes, yes I do. I haven’t posted anything on it for a while but I have one.  There are older posts you can read.”

I had made this statement several times in as many weeks and it occurred to me that I had no idea when I had last posted anything or what I had written.  So yesterday after reading a friend’s blog post, one of many he is posting every week, there I was on the WordPress site, I clicked on to my own blog.  I thought it had been about six months since my last post, but it has actually been about five.  I guess that is some good news.  My last post was on Halloween.  I had posted something I had written a couple of years ago.  It had nothing to do with Halloween. I remember that night, our dog was recovering from ACL surgery and we had kept the front of the house dark.  We did not want trick-or-treaters which would have caused her to try and jump up and run to the door.

Many sad things have happened in our lives over the past seven months.  With yesterday also being Easter, I reflected deeply on Easter as a new beginning, a fresh start.  I know we can start again in every moment, but there are the milestones in a year that feel like new beginnings to me, New Year’s Day, Easter, the day school gets out in June, my birthday in July, the day school starts in August and decorating for Christmas.

Since Spring Break ends today and school resumes tomorrow for my teenage son, I thought about this opportunity for a New Beginning.  What do I want to begin? Begin Again? How do I want it to look and feel?  What can I do differently this time?  What thoughts and actions can be encouraging and sustaining?  How can I eliminate self-sabotage and the feeling of failure right out of the gate?

This morning after meditating and a few games of Candy Crush, I decided the following; I love making lists, they clear my head and quiet the frantic voice that tells me I have SO much to do but am REALLY lazy. I wrote down the following question “What do I think I might want to do, be, have or experience?”  I wrote two notebook pages of everything from the mundane to the fantastical.  I wrote every crazy or boring thing that came into my head.

Many themes emerged. I want to feel differently about my health and this whole menopause ride. There is much to do in our home, office, garage, blah blah blah! I want to stop hating Windows 8 and figure out how to make it work for me.  My husband and I have wonderful relatives and friends that have added much needed humor and fun to our lives, especially since September.  When I focus on adding more joy and beauty in my life, the results have been wonderful. We have a successful thriving business.  I can see beyond my dining room table piled high with papers and know that I am ahead of the bookkeeping game for the first time.  My older sister is my bookkeeper and lives in another state.  She endured two different types of chemo and radiation last year maintaining a state of grace and presence in the moment that I was privileged to witness.  I had not seen her for almost a year and she visited a few weeks ago.  In less than a day she reconciled 2014!

Most of these themes were not new to me.  The way I want to embrace them is.  We all know that your life can change in an instant with a phone call, a diagnosis, an injury, someone’s actions or your own.  In looking back, I know that my husband and I did what we needed to do and let the rest go, we were where we were needed most with the people who mattered the most. When you put people first, everything else tends to fall into place one way or another.

My list isn’t done and I hope to add to it daily, crossing out and scribbling are essential as every day things change.   I am setting my intention to give myself a break, see what I did achieve and look at clearing off a table with an eye towards how beautiful it will look when I am done, much like a sculptor reveals the image hidden in the block of marble.

So yes I have a blog.  Sure, I would love to post several times a week but I am not setting this goal in stone, it is merely a lovely desire I have, one of many.