Reviving my passion

I’m embarrassed to realize that I have not created a blog entry for almost a year!  Admittedly, blogging was starting to feel too much like a job, even though it was self imposed.  I felt stressed to find topics that might interest. So, I stepped back, and waited.  After all, I was retired and had sworn off stress, and blogging was beginning to trigger stress.  The words of Padma Venkatraman, whose writing workshop I had attended that first summer of retirement, echoed, “Sometimes the vessel is full and spills right onto the page, and sometimes it is empty.  Honor both.”  So I walked away from my passion in September 2015, feeling that my vessel was empty.  

It took a suggestion from Jet Vertz, my co-presenter of The Bucket List class at OLLI, to remind me that this writing I do is indeed my passion.  I have learned that one way to learn about myself  is to pay attention to sincere (filter for sincerity) compliments that people pay me. Instead of deflecting his recommendation to use some of my past blog entries to inspire The Bucket List class and create new entries during the class to revive my blog, I am embracing his suggestion, and getting back to the blank page.  Sometimes acquaintances can they see your strengths clearer than you ever will on your own.   

Maybe my vessel is not full and overflowing, but I am going to take some of my own advice and
“Fear Less, Judge Less, and Resist Less” - my simple 2015  Christmas card message.   Jet’s comment drove me to my website to reread my blogs to try to muster the nerve to do it again.  Thank you, Jet, for making me revisit my own advice and realize that I need to heed it.

I have to face my FEAR that I am not writing anything that interests my readers.  It stings when no one comments on my blog, but it doesn’t mean it did not influence someone in someway, even if the only person influenced was me.  I have to face the fact that although I try not to pass judgement on others, I do JUDGE  myself, especially my writing, pretty strictly.   Permission for letting it flow and trusting it will go in the right direction has been granted.  I have been resisting the blank page, although my journal notes and entries continue as usual.  I will not RESIST turning my thoughts and ideas about the transitions of my life into regular blogs.

My goal, I now realize, is to start and engage in A CONVERSATION about living life to the fullest, at all ages.  I admit that I feel very vulnerable about declaring this intention.  Who am I to profess expertise on “living life to the fullest?”  According to Brené Brown, Ph.D, a noted social researcher, by embracing our own vulnerability, and not denying it, pathways of innovation, creativity and change open.  We will see, Brené, we will see. . .

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